The opening will take place Friday, March 1st, 18h-21h
Visiting days and hours: Saturday, March 2nd, Sunday 3rd, 14h-18h

For the month of February artist-in-residence, Vlada Predelina, is spending time at an other world with her enquiry into knowledges and histories which are shared through conversations around the kitchen table and the methods of how these can be highlighted and amplified effectively and anonymously whilst keeping in mind the sensitivities that they may hold.

Over the last few years, several cooking-with-dough gatherings opened up many emotions and urgencies to consider. Personal histories were shared — intimate and complex — from family stories to first-hand experiences to situated common knowledges from the specific regions within the territories that are currently governed by the Russian Federation. The dough allowed space and time to bring out different perspectives, to realign and to focus on the forgotten, erased or unwritten histories. These multifaceted voices are tied together by one common thread: Russian Colonialism, from its imperial history to its effects today.

The aim of this project is to bring together and amplify the spoken words, and thereby to strengthen their significance. The title of the project is a direct translation of a Russian word усилить ‘usilit’’ which can mean both to amplify and to strengthen.

Between the 1st to 3rd of March, the artist will share the start of this research through an audio installation made in collaboration with sound designer Olivier Terpstra. Vlada Predelina will be in the space throughout the weekend for conversations around the table.

Vlada Predelina [b. 1991, Sverdlovsk, USSR (now Ekaterinburg, RUS)] is an artist based in Rotterdam. Her work looks into the meaning of a sense of place through a range of media including food, natural dyes, bioplastics and ceramics. She creates gatherings around a particular medium as a focus to bring out intimate discussions and situated histories. Currently she is researching the role of tacit knowledge production systems of women in relation to land and colonial expansion. Since 2020 she has been working as part of Eathouse, an artist cooking collective. Since 2021 she is also working with Tuinlab, a collaborative garden project between artists, and neighbours of Atelier Bornerveld 169. She holds a MFA degree from HKU University of the Arts Utrecht (2023). Her personal and collective work has been shown in West Den Haag (2022), Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2021-2022), Roodkapje, Rotterdam (2019), and LOA Gallery, London (2019).

Olivier Terpstra (b.1993, The Netherlands) is a producer, film composer and sound artist combining the warm and rich sounds of analogue synthesizers with field recordings and other collected sound snippets from his archive. His work seeks to create sensorial spaces where stories can be told and shared with the others. Working as both an applied composer and autonomous artist his projects can vary from filmscores to installation work and also live performances. Under the alias Oliv Oliv he is sharing his autonomous work that is a blend of electronic techno music and a more classical film scoring approach. Giving it a unique mixture of the two genres.

Project supported by CBK Rotterdam.
Photos courtesy Jake Caleb.

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