Sexing the Archive, Art Exhibition MAP Gallery, Leeds, 1st - 14th June

A group of Leeds University students have shaped an art exhibition that addresses gender issues surrounding, ‘the archive’. By considering the traditionally perceived polarities of masculinity and femininity, they discover whether it is possible to ‘sex’ the archive and the process of building a collection. This is questioned in terms of archives being active or passive, creative or procreative, or a combination of all. The exhibition will include the work of existing artists who implement the aesthetic and concept of the archive in their practice.

Renowned Swiss artist Pascal Rousson expands the boundaries of art as he works to engage with an increasingly pluralistic environment. He will be displaying his mixed media work “Museum of the Dispossessed”, which contains collected ephemera, objects and reworked paintings that appropriate D.I.Y. magazine covers. The installation is reminiscent of adolescent bedrooms, and comical narratives portrayed in the paintings associate the work of ‘great’ artists with the commercial aesthetics of magazines found in the home. The work also contributes to the ever-blurring boundaries of artist and curator, and questions who has ultimate creative control. No longer is it purely the job of the genius artist to leave behind precious relics for the curator to archive and keep safe. Now, the two combine, in order to fecundate artworks with narratives and meaning.

Other artists to be exhibited include Anne Mansfield and Hamman Aldorui. Mansfield is currently a fine art student at the University of Leeds, making work revolving around the concept of appropriation, by deconstructing/ recreating found books, diaries, and other objects containing archival information. Anne’s practice takes something with a specific function, time and history, and creates a dialogue or narrative between the artist and the material she works with. The sound works of former Leeds University student, Hamman Aldouri will consist of an evocative installation of audiotapes, paralleling with the notion of the body as an archive. The artist emphasises the fragility of collecting and how it can somehow evoke the death of the archive, as he has encompassed a fully comprehensive array of information on a physical entity that is bound to eventually vanish. This contrasts with the open-ended format of the ‘traditional’ archive, which leaves room for constant transformation.

Contributing to the exploration of gendering the archive, the students will be putting together a series of documentaries, which question the motives behind the building of domestic archives. Interviewees will discuss personal bedroom wall displays, and the choices that have been made as to what is put on show versus that which is. To what extent is the undercover archive a protected collection of personal keepsakes, and the displayed archive a constructed narrative of the self?