Supermarket - Stockholm Independent Art Fair 2017 in the search of intimacy!

Intimacy

More than ever today's societies have become inter-dependent economically, politically, but also increasingly so culturally. In an age with radical political and religious movements on the rise, mass migration across continents, and the ruthless political agendas of the global leaders, this mutual dependence differs greatly from the one we knew. The traditional model of society built upon closely tied communities and mutual trust has been abandoned in order to reach a smooth and sterile postmodern glister. Our current world negates the personal, the vulnerable, the frankly spoken in favour of ultimate normalisation. We have substituted intimate contact with fast and detached closeness. We 'get intimate,' but we do not share anything.

According to the dictionary, the opposite of intimacy is enmity, hate, and disagreement. But lack of intimacy does not necessarily have strictly negative connotations. It represents an empty space: a passive disinterest, a blank spot that marks that something of extreme importance is missing in our lives. By choosing Intimacy as the Supermarket 2017 theme perhaps we can point towards this absence and bring forward the aesthetic dialogue of intimacy. Art is not an ultimate cure, but it is capable of expressing, sharing and showing intimacy in ways that we perhaps do not dare to do elsewhere. It turns us away from the hegemonised egalitarian ideal back into individuals with all our weaknesses, and wounds, and soft flesh.

How do we sustain intimacy in a world that essentially works against it?

The thing is, intimacy will not be given to us just like that. To 'intimate' is to share, to communicate, to actively engage with the life around us. None of us really know the right way how to 'do this intimacy.' But then again, if we did, what kind of sterilised standardised intimacy would we get anyway?