West, London
Maren Hassinger
Passing Through
Tiwani Contemporary“I don’t know where I come from and I don’t know where I’m going. This is the life I share with everyone. We are equal in this predicament. We are all passing through. From this untenable place, I make things.” - Maren Hassinger Tiwani Contemporary is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of work by Maren Hassinger outside of the United States. For more than four decades, the pioneering New York-based artist has worked across sculpture, drawing, installation, film/video, performance, and public art. The exhibition will bring together a selection of six key sculptures including new work alongside unseen works on paper spanning Hassinger’s influential practice. Known for her meditative and critical explorations of nature, movement and transformation, Hassinger’s work emerged in the 1970s and 1980s alongside the African-American avant-garde of Los Angeles and has built upon the legacies of abstraction especially post-minimalism. Her poetic oeuvre has frequently incorporated industrial objects and organic materials including plastic bags, tree branches, leaves, dirt and newspapers. She is known especially for the longstanding use of wire rope in her work which she has employed for its expressive possibilities. Hassinger’s expansive art-making follows a humanistic approach which has led the artist to reflect on the pressing issues of the day including industrialisation, consumerism, gender, culture, identity, equality, race, politics and social policy. The exhibition will feature wire rope sculpture works, including Consolation (1996) and Excerpts from ‘On Dangerous Ground’ (2019) alongside recent newspaper-based works, Sit Upons (2010/2015), Fight The Power (2017), Hand in Hand, (2019). Drawings titled Savannah (2007), Whisper (2007) and Ocean (2007) will also comprise the show. Born out of the marginalised positions Hassinger has experienced throughout her life, her innovative practice has challenged and continues to, orthodox notions of art-making through its adoption of non-traditional materials and myriad site-specific and performative methodologies. This distinctive, restorative, and humanistic approach is an attempt to ultimately effect unity, solidarity and significantly equality.