PROJECT SPACE
DEAR HISTORY, PAINTING
ABBRA KOTLARCZYK
Dear History, Painting has developed out of a proposed feminist history painting gone AWOL. The acronym AWOL stands for “absent without official leave”. Originally employed as a militarist term, the expression has trickled down into everyday speech amongst civilians as a term synonymous with acts of dissent. Here the etymology of the expression becomes a placeholder for an active withdrawal from didacticism in dominant narratives in art and place making. In this sense, it is proposed that to be AWOL is to re-place or to de-colonise; using painting in an inverted manner, as a support rather than as the dominant text, Dear History, Painting aims to dismantle some of the tendencies for dominant narratives to transpire, by way of shifting the focus to non-hierarchical and expanded terms. Through its literal capacity to “make something known”, the gallery will become an expanded publication, employing post-medium dispersion as a means of critiquing dominant rational. In the words of Joanna Fidducia: “to dilate rather than transcend opposition”.
