Declaration of Sentiments in Stockholm

Artist list

Nevin Arig, Erica Bello, Sofia Björkman, Klara Brynge, Jessica Calderwood
, Melissa Cameron, Fatima Tocornal Garcia, Cata Gibert
, Gésine Hackenberg, Yajie Hu, Mari Ishikawa, Helena Lehtinen, Anna Lewis, Eija Mustonen
, Sondra Sherman, Niki Stylianou, Burcu Sülek
, Tarja Tuupanen, Eva Van Kempen, Snem Yildirim

We are happy that Co + Lab and some of the artists can come to PLATINA in Stockholm and show the exhibition including works from 20 international artists who have used jewellery as a medium. The curators have brought together women artists within the framework of gender-based women's struggle in the art environment, artists who have not been reluctant to hard work, have continued their art practices in their own way, to have acquired high positions at art academies, to have organized international events, to start their own galleries or exhibition spaces and much more.

This exhibition is named after the Declaration of Sentiments at the Seneca Falls Congress, which was held in 1848 under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Declaration was signed by 100 men and women, and this was the first organized women's rights record in history and advocacy for equal rights for women.

Snem Yildirim: Daily Obedience Routines" series is about the terms such as obedience, authority, hierarchy and questioning how the education system transforms women into individuals, who are obedient to authority and gender roles. Snem Yildirim especially questions how, through school, the authority regulates every area of a “girl”s life from the movements of their body to their physical appearance and it raises children who are forced to live within certain templates. She created the "Daily Obedience Routines" series by re-enacting all the actions she repeated during school years and by reinterpreting the objects in her memory.

Eija Mustonen: The Apron and Mittens protect their user. They are used while shoveling, harvesting, hammering, gardening, cooking. Apron and mittens protect you from dirt, hard work, heat, cold. They are symbols for work, they represent manual labor. These nickel silver and copper apron and mittens are made by using my early skills, as I was educated as a silversmith 30 years ago. Hammering metal with a hammer and anvil fascinates me, how two-dimensional metal plates can be formed into a three-dimensional form. With these pieces of work I want to honor craft and especially smithing. In general mittens have many meanings: In Finnish, “to give the mittens” it is to refuse a proposal. To “hit the mittens on the table” is to give up. To “hang your mittens on the nail” means that work has been done.

Anna Lewis: The three key elements of the ‘Declaration of sentiments’ are ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. For me this sits parallel with the three symbols represented by the purple, white and green ribbons of the Suffragette movement; that of loyalty, purity and hope. Emmeline Pankhurst rose up to lead women to fight for the right to vote. Beneath her genteel appearance lay a strong brave woman, in her own words a “hooligan”. It is down to the bravery of these women that in the UK women have a voice today. Appearances can be deceptive, a feather is the most fragile and delicate of materials, yet allows a bird to fly; the ultimate symbol of freedom. Chains are the symbol of control and restriction yet it is through this restriction that women have taken back control, and chains turn into strength.


Opening:
Saturday, 5 March 2022, 12 - 16:00.