Leave No Trace (Athens) I-VIII

plays with the memory of lived and shared experience, transforming manipulated images of performance documentation (specifically, SULK performed at the 6th Athens Biennial in 2018), into a modular set of transparent screens. The work focuses on the idea of embodied text—becoming together with text, in physical and digital spaces. It also deals with the idea of documentation (in its various forms) and its implications with surveillance, collection, quantification and distribution of shared experience. The screens here form a spatial installation which is activated by the movement of the audience; the stretched chiffon textiles acquire and lose saturation viewed at different angles, becoming a ghostly presence in the space.

RYXPER1126AE 02:60

emits a perfume that exists as a molecular imprint of the SULK performance. Produced in collaboration with IFF Inc. on the basis of the air samples captured with the use of headspace technology on site of the aforementioned performance, RYXPER1126AE 02:60 can be understood as an olfactory method of documentation of performance and space. RYXPER1126AE 02:60 bears a poetic sign or memory of belonging to a certain intimate collective experience, conceived through olfactory acts, contractual, ritual-like gestures carried out, as part of the choreography of the SULK performance.

Votive Flowers and Freestanding Votive Flowers

are situated in different places throughout the exhibition space, sometimes blocking the way like stumbling blocks. This sculptural series focuses on the collective and ritualistic moments of grief while referring to the votive offerings. Here the plastic fiber-optic flowers are positioned in the place of an offering, thus, bearing a pledge that rejects nostalgic wallowing in bygone times and points to a new future worth living. Unlike living flowers, they do not wither and thus are at once a reminder, a memorial, and a new beginning.

Dorota Gawęda (PL) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (LT) are an artist duo living and working in Basel. Both graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 2012. Their work spans performance, sculpture, photography, painting and video. They are the founders of the YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP (2013–2021). They have exhibited internationally including at: Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna (2022); Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2022); Kunstverein Hamburg (2021); Istituto Svizzero, Palermo and Milan (2021); Kunstverein Leipzig (2021); Swiss Institute, New York (2020); Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2020); Fri Art – Kunsthalle Fribourg (2020); Futura, Prague (2019); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Cell Project Space, London (2018); 6th Athens Biennale (2018); Kunsthalle Basel (2017); ICA, London (2017); MOMA, Warsaw (2016); Berlin Biennale 9 (2016); MaM, Paris (2015) among others. They are the recipients of CERN Collide Residency 2022 and laureates of the Swiss Performance Art Award 2021.