All Your Neighbors by Jeremiah Day & Alisa Margolis
Jeremiah Day & Alisa Margolis are lecturers at Berlin International and have participated with their project “All Your Neighbors” in the exhibition “Die Balkone”.
About the project
Margolis and Day’s collaboration juxtaposes fragments from a new series of figurative pastel paintings by Margolis, and Day's ongoing commemoration of Carl and Margarethe Schurz, Germans who fled the crushed revolution of 1848 to become abolitionists and civil society activists in the United Sates. Margolis’ continues her proposal for a “contemporary sublime,” drawing from her inspiration and engagement with the Italian Madonella tradition of painting’s function in public space. The quote - "If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.” - comes from Carl Schurz 1859 attack on slavery, preceding the US Civil War in which he fought. Planned originally for their own apartment building’s window, the project took a new turn when it became clear that the building on Choriner Strasse 12 - home to the famous original Späti, a living monument and soul of the neighborhood – will possibly be sold. Margolis' ambiguous hands suddenly seemed full of latent meanings when imaging the loss of dozens of neighbors and the anchor of community. At the initiative of the Späti, the work has shifted in location (and scale) to Choriner 12, with the support of local cafe Lass Uns Freunde Blieben, with the aim of re-visiting the commemorative meaning of figuration and perhaps even contributing to this unfolding story, as the efforts to preserve the Späti take shape.
-Jeremiah Day & Alisa Margolis
About Alisa Margolis
Alisa Margolis is an American artist whose paintings explore the intersection of the Baroque and a contemporary intuitive practice of picture making. Parallel to this practice, she tests the confines of the painting frame, as an object in the world through site specific painting installations. She received her BA from Columbia University in New York (1997) in Visual Art and Art History and MFA fellowship from de Ateliers in Amsterdam, Netherlands (2003). Her work has been shown in exhibitions internationally, such as the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Prague biennial, Renaissance Society, Chicago and the Triumph of Painting at the Saatchi Gallery, London. In 2016, Margolis was awarded a Visiting Professorship at The Academy of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts Helsinki. In Berlin, Margolis is represented by Galerie Judin.
About Jeremiah Day
The Amsterdam and Berlin-based artist Jeremiah Day studied art at the University of California, Los Angeles and subsequently completed the residency program at the Rijksakademie. Visual artist Jeremiah Day is also trained in movement, working regularly with the pioneer of postmodern dance Simone Forti. His work establishes a montage/narrative form, where political and personal realities intertwine through different techniques, including photography, video and movement. He is represented by Arcade, London and Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam. In 2017, Jeremiah Day earned a doctorate from the Free University of Amsterdam (VU) for his practice based project, drawing upon Hannah Arendt and Allan Kaprow as the basis for renewed exploration of art’s role in civil society. Day has been awarded grants from the Netherlands National Research Foundation, the Oslo Academy for Arts, the Berlin Senate and others.
Source: bbk.bildungswerk.de