Jessica Williams (be)longing #4: Makda Embaie, Marina Dubia and Shaon M

Welcome to the exhibition opening from 12:00 on Saturday, August 12 at House of Foundation. A public conversation between the artists in conjunction with the exhibition opening and book launch will take place promptly at 13:00.

For the fourth iteration of (be)longing, three new artist publications by Makda Embaie, Marina Dubia and Shaon M are presented at House of Foundation. These three artists where chosen through an open call earlier in the year, with the only condition that the works somehow addressed the title. A new selection of books featured in the reading room were sourced around and during the 2023 Bergen Art Book Fair. 

Language, shame, and transformation are the ties that bind these artists together. And each has their own unique perspective, method, and mode of communicating and/or obscuring. Plurality and specificity are, in fact, not mutually exclusive but go hand in hand. Here there is room for all. You do not have to understand everything. 

The artists in this exhibition were selected through a Scandinavian open call. The call received over 40 applications, thank you to all who applied and all the strong projects that unfortunately could not be included. 

«Breaking Bread and Language» by Makda Embaie aims to carve out a space where people can practice their specific language constellations without it being aligned, compared or corrected into the idea of language that the nation state has. Both a guide and a testimony, the book and associated work are generous and intimate. 

«E Eu Com Isso? (What have I got to do with that?)» by Marina Dubia is a work that demands the viewer to engage and look closely. The origin of the work is a fragile, intimate text once removed from an email almost a decade ago. Too important to delete forever, the text was uncovered, built upon and is the basis of the artist’s exploration of blackness through conversations and correspondence with family and friends. 

«Brown Babble» by Shaon M is a collection of short texts embedded in a chaotic and intricately detailed visual meditation on obscurity, abstraction, repetition and density. The work is not one that is searching for or portraying acceptance, but rather flaunts a specific, individual vision and way of being. The texts are both older and created especially for this occasion. 

About the project: 
https://jessicawilliams.info/belonging/4.htm