Photo: Ashlee Christman
In connection with Mireia Rocher's exhibition scratched l rubbed l caressed, Galleri Duerr invites you to Rocher's performance Wednesday, August 31. The performance piece will be an intimate meeting between the artist and one visitor at a time. During this encounter, Rocher will read to the visitor the passage they have chosen from the notebook that is a part of her performative work Self-portrait of Friction. Light refreshments will be served and the exhibition is open for viewing while you await your turn. Self-Portrait of Friction is an ongoing intervention with people, places and objects that affect the artist in multiple ways. Working with sandpaper, she finds that the physical properties of this material make it a perfect poetic medium to transform thoughts, experiences, memories and emotions into a tactile form. Rocher sands places and people who have somehow left a mark in her life or which she longs to be marked by. This ongoing intervention is a way to both leave traces and collect traces. To provoke friction and engagement. The artist then documents this ongoing process in a notebook – explaining how each place, person or object relates to her. Like the installation itself, the notebook is performative and develops during the exhibition period. The sandpaper used becomes the physical evidence of an experience or feeling related to a room or a person. When Rocher talks about friction, it does not only apply to physical contact but also to interactions on different levels – if friction occurs, there is also growth and development; there is energy and change.
Mireia Rocher’s background in linguistics has, to a great degree, influenced her practice, manifesting through text-based works, collage, sculpture, performance and installation. In this way, she shares with the public personal stories from ordinary life composed of everyday materials. An interest in the barriers that prevent a total comprehension of language, emotions or senses shows in her work, which addresses themes such as exclusion, belonging, and the power that lies in vulnerability. Mireia Rocher is a conceptual artist based in Uppsala, Sweden (b.1978 in Barcelona). Rocher has studied at Escola Llotja. Barcelona and HDK Valand, Gothenburg.
