I am displaying a photographic work from my series, Earth Series at Today Art Museum, Beijing with Arts Territory Exchange.

‘A Stitch in Time’ draws draw on the theoretical and critical writing of the Argentinian political theorist, Ernesto Laclau, who, throughout his life was interested in the capacity of people to link together (‘stitch’) new ideas, images and meanings into systems, beliefs and ideologies which had previously not existed. His writing, draws on Sigmund Freud, Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci, developed in the context of contemporary capitalism in the west in the second half of the twentieth century whose cultural and social forms he sought to explain. At the same time he was a lifelong socialist, interested in the fate of revolutionary ideas and ideals across Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America.

The exhibition features several sub themes dealing with aspects of global change, socio-political transformations and the attitudes of artists and art to the situations we collectively face now: (1) environmental degradation and potential disaster, (2) conflict and aggression between peoples, nations and regions, (3) the legacies of the past in terms of imperialism, colonisation and war in the twentieth century (4) the idealistic and spiritual responses people, including artists, have developed in response to these crises, and (5) the practical ways in which artists and art practices have tried to counter the threats that globalisation now poses to our collective future.

The contribution from Arts Territory Exchange brings together a number of artworks produced within the aTE network’s collaborative long distance partnerships which reflect ideas of colonial damage and the sharing of histories of exploitation (territorial, gender based and otherwise) and the idea of networks and artist collectives offering the possibility of reparation and healing. Here you can read aTE’s catalogue essay by Gudrun Filipska.