Sealed for your protection
A duo show by Julie Sando + Vanessa Urben

Sealed for your protection

SEALED FOR YOUR PROTECTION is the phrase taken from a protective washer on a food jar (hermetically sealed before opening the package). In this context, the artists found this sentence both comical and absurd. While the washer is only a protection of poor quality food ensuring the hygiene of the industrial product, the sentence seems excessive and seems to refer more to an authority, or even an emergency.

The artists have decided to take up the sentence and reinterpret it in a broader way around the theme of « protection », and more precisely the use of this term by the power/authorities.

In this context, the notions of soft power and hard power challenge them. They approach them in a metaphorical way, while questioning their sometimes absurd – or even abusive – uses (manipulations, media, politician’s speeches, police violence, etc.) through an installation thought out in pairs, mixing texts, drawings, objects, textures and videos.

On view from 23 to 30 January 2020
Photos: Sylvain Gelewski

Julie Sando is a multi-disciplinary Swiss-Japanese artist. After a bachelor’s degree in cinema at the Geneva University of Art and Design, she pursued a Master’s Degree in Contemporary Art in the same university, including a semester at the Kyoto University of Art and Design in Japan (Film and Mixed Media). She is active in filmmaking as well as in performance, installation, painting, concrete music and VJ. She defends an art that breaks the barriers of different mediums and goes from one to the other without hesitating to mix them together. Her works explore the subject of traces, blurred identity, multi-nationality, gender and language. Taking into account the environment (spatiality, historicity, audience) in which she creates and / or exhibits is also an important element of her work. Her works and performances were presented at La Fabrik in Monthey, at the Binz39 space in Zurich and at the Horikawa AC Lab in Kyoto in 2019. And at the Aube and Hallway galleries in Kyoto, at One gee in fog and Halle Nord spaces in Geneva the year before. Her different films were projected in numerous film festivals in Switzerland, Belgium, France, Macedonia, Taiwan and Japan.

juliesando.com

The basic motivator for Vanessa Urben’s work is life: Or rather the pains of life. There’s usually something very autobiographic about each group of work – at least this is where she’s heading to: groups of work that function first and foremost together and not alone. Even though some might function by themselves as well. They talk, reflect on social, spiritual, philosophical, psychological, or political questions without answering any of them. They might be judgemental once in a while but that seems inevitable. Her main interest / hope is that we become more aware, more sensitive and conscious of ourselves and our environment (not the environment that stops at the edge of 10 meters around us). There is definitely something to question about Pop Culture so she’s trying her best in making work that is clear and easily abordable, but rather as something to feel than to think. Her installations and multiform pieces are almost all made of found, recycled and rethought objects.

instagram.com/kurukkaka