Mural Diogo Ruas und Jagoda Cierniak

Mots
“Objectum” (2020/2021)

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Objectum 

We live in a world full of objects, simple tools that accompany our everyday life. Some of these things hold deep meaning for us, they carry stories, beliefs and memories.

One such object is Jagoda’s old camera, it once belonged to her grandfather Ryszard. When looking through the photos taken by him half a century ago, we noticed that most of them were taken, not only at important family moments, but in the company of various objects that were special to the family at the time.

Interested in objects, not only because of the emotional charge they carry but also because of their diverse aesthetics, we wanted to explore shapes through painting and photography.

We met with and took portraits of twenty-five people who live here in Berlin, we asked them to share with us the story of an object they feel attached to. The photographs were taken, among others with the Zorki 4, the analogue camera mentioned above. The images serve as references for a series of paintings and a street mural in Spandau, Berlin.

Through „Objectum“ we want to highlight that we are all equal. Our associations with what we call „my place“, „my home“, „my thing“ are relative and universal. Each of us can find in any of the artefacts something familiar, cosy and something which stirs emotion.

Shapes are important for us as a language tool; they are neutral, they have no nation and no geographical context. We feel abstract blocks go one step further, allowing us to perceive and understand the world in our own way. In a time that encourages people to focus on what separates us, we aim to find a universal language and create a common yet bespoke space that belongs to everyone.

The Objectum project has produced twenty-five portraits, paintings, indoor and outdoor murals.

The mural in urban space is located in Spandau, at 22 Obstalle Street.

Mots (Jagoda Cierniak and Diogo Ruas Aires), “Objectum” (2020/21)

Presumably, most people own some object or thing that is of special significance to them. Nonetheless, the reasons for these objects’ relevance are just as diverse as their appearances and their individual characteristics. A personal memory is probably attached to many objects or they have a high material value. Sometimes the appeal exerted by these private treasures is also more inexplicable. Often it is precisely these things that turn a place to live into a home, a room into a personal sanctuary, or just an ordinary corner of a room into a private shrine. Those who can claim a place of this kind for themselves have, it seems, found at least a modicum of happiness. Perhaps, this often secretly felt love for an object (also referred to as an objectum by experts) is something that links all—or at least many—people.

The artist duo Mots—consisting of Jagoda Cierniak from Poland and Diogo Ruas Aires from Portugal—selected beloved objects of this kind as the point of departure for their artistic project. During their Fresh A.I.R. residency, they initiated a wall-painting project, wanting to get Berliners from various age groups involved in its motif. After the Gewobag property company made a large wall on a building at Obstallee 22 in Berlin-Spandau available to the artists, the duo searched for people who were prepared to tell them about a thing that was valuable to them. They found a series of Berliners aged five to sixty. During their meetings together, Cierniak created photographs of the objects and their owners. The artist duo in turn constructed their motif out of the objects. They based their color scheme on the tones of the urban surroundings, and they tried to create a pleasant, homey atmosphere using various shades of light purple. Monumentalized in size and abstracted in form, the private objects are now displayed on the wall of the building and produce a combination that is extremely interesting visually and oscillates stylistically between reality and abstraction.

With a partially realistic and partially abstract aesthetic, the artist duo Mots takes up a discussion that was essential to the history of modern art and is also intertwined with the history of Berlin. It is well known that, after the Second World War, the West spoke out in favor of abstraction in art; in doing so, it claimed to have created something that was universally intelligible and would unite all people. The East, on the other hand, continued to adhere to Socialist Realism and saw precisely that as a widely comprehensible and unity-building possibility for communication. Traces of the fact that both aspirations ultimately remained unfulfilled can still be recognized in Berlin, which was reunified not so long ago. However, the artist duo Mots does not want to take a position regarding this question. They negate the differences or supposed antitheses between the artistic styles they have adopted.

The artist duo’s central aim is to use their wall painting to create something for those people who live in the directly surrounding area. In appealing to Berliners’ concrete love for specific objects and bringing them together through them or, alternatively, causing a monumental painting to emerge out of the objects, they are striving for social equality and also the possibility of a communication that does not function by way of written language. At the same time, however, this also means not enforcing a homogenizing unity that simply subsumes differences and individual features. They are also both aware that they brought their own artistic conceptions and object-related preferences into the project with them. In this context, Cierniak and Ruas Aires also want to be challenged by the participants in the project and their differentness. What emerged in the end was a painting in which a unity appears on multiple levels, but can only be thought, seen, and realized within its numerous and various differences.

Mots – „Objectum“ (2020/21) | Video: YES, AND… productions GmbH & Co. KG


About Mots

Mots – the duo of urban artists from Portugal and Poland, created by Diogo Ruas, painter and illustrator, and Jagoda Cierniak, photographer and project coordinator.

Their collaboration fused their individual approaches characterized by Diogo’s experience as an urban artist and Jagoda’s engagement in social grassroots initiatives and art projects.
Mots encompasses dozens of murals. Their works have been featured in a number of publications, urban art festivals, group and solo art shows hosted in Portugal and abroad. The couple’s fascination with the abstract and realistic margins is clearly evident in their works that include canvas, large-scale murals and interdisciplinary projects.

For more information: Website I Facebook I Instagram


Fresh A.I.R. #4 Online-Showcase

Fresh A.I.R. Jahrgang vier Logo

The Online-Showcase offers an opportunity to get an overview of the highly diverse projects of the fourth class of Fresh A.I.R. artists with their different kinds of media and aesthetics.

On view are video and photographic materials about the individual projects, each of which is accompanied by an explanatory text that aims to offer insights into the work’s aesthetic experience.

learn more about the Online-Showcase