Summerhall Arts is hosting four solo exhibitions in its galleries by artists whose work calls for social, political, environmental, or cultural change, presented under the theme of CATALYST: Art as Activism.
Scottish multidisciplinary artist Eilidh Appletree’s sculptural installation addresses the great contradiction of the global capitalist economy: with its industrial agriculture and aquaculture techniques for maximising profit, often described as ‘efficient’, it’s driving biodiversity loss. What Eilidh emphasises with her artworks is that animal life is interconnected with human life; an end to one means an end to the other.
As you walk into the room, a tall sculpture made of woven steel wire greets you. The resemblance to fishermen’s nets and the fish-like form of the sculpture together reminds us of the reality of ‘bycatch’ in industrial fishing, and Appletree connects these nets with the lives being taken by industrial fishing.
Every year, millions of sea animals die as an unintended capture in industrial fishing methods. These animals, which are thrown dead into the sea, are represented in the exhibition by the striking artwork Mother and Baby. Two fish-like forms, woven from steel wires, remain side by side: the baby was caught as a bycatch in the net – we can see the baby’s flesh. The surface on top of the wire net is completely dry, while the wall surface has been deliberately kept moist, under transparent plastic.
Eilidh’s sand sculptures are a great example of her interest in materiality. She chose sand as a comforting element that everyone can relate to and an integral part of the Scottish landscape, where many animals live, and life thrives. But sand is also a very important symbol of desertification – the end of life as we know it: the sculptures feature human faces in distress and rhododendron petals, creating an environment where no other plants can grow. She made the sculptures just as we made sandcastles as children, using sand, water and mould, which will add another dimension to the sculptures, as over the course of the exhibition the water will evaporate, and as the material changes we’ll see how the sculptures evolve.
For many of her sculptures in the exhibition, she uses mycelium – a natural material that forms a network connecting all trees and on which mushrooms grow. She places the mycelium in moulds, and either removes and dries them, or lets the mushrooms grow.
Appletree’s sculptures of human faces emphasise human-driven destruction of nature that will ultimately lead to self-destruction. She uses steel hooks to hang the heads, resembling a fisherman’s or a butcher’s hook.
In one of the sculptures, she combines domesticated-animal fleece with soy wax. A tail is emerging from a human face, partly covered in fleece, trapped in a cage suspended from the ceiling. This is an exhibition about destruction, yet from the moment you step into the room, the quiet colour palette and the soothing feeling of daylight draw you in, mesmerised by both the look of the sculptures and by the labour and care the artist put into making them – a sobering contradiction.
From a naturally-illuminated room, I entered a darker gallery resembling a museum, with its glass display cabinets. Iranian-born, London based artist Taraneh Dana’s exhibition A Heart in Exile explores how exile feels, and the glass cases emphasise the fragility of those feelings. They helped me slow down and visit all the feelings one by one, respectfully. In the Persian language, Taraneh means music, but not simply musiqi – it’s a melody that embraces a story, a warmth you would carry in your heart. This layering conveys much about Persian culture and how Taraneh feels. When it comes to memories, the juicier the narrative, the heavier it becomes to carry.
There are three bodies of work in this exhibition, created over the past three years. ‘I was not thinking of necessarily relating them to each other’, Taraneh says. She made them ‘because this has been the underlying concern’ of her life. She explains that she didn’t feel she belonged fully while living in Iran for 29 years, but moving to the UK gave another dimension to this feeling.
Taraneh explains how her art emerged: ‘All of these pieces are about immigration, living in exile, some of them are more focusing on the difficulties of moving to a country and not being able to go back, some of them are focusing on beauties of building a new life, good things it’s brought into my life. Some of them are about conversation for the future, what can we make together to make it easier for everyone so people don’t have to suffer as much. I think it’s a bittersweet exhibition for me. It has all the complexities of these experiences.’
The only pieces displayed outside the cabinets are two hearts, positioned just under the exhibition texts. The starting point for these hearts is a Roman votive, where people pray for healing, making body parts out of terracotta and taking them to temples. Taraneh describes the feeling, and calls it helplessness: ‘I was thinking at the time, they didn’t find any better way, this feeling of helplessness, to be in pain but not know a way to get rid of it and to hope for it… It really reminded me of the pain in exile. This longing, wanting to go back, not being able to do it. This helplessness felt really familiar.’ She felt like her heart was the part of her body that needed healing. She says she made quite a few of them, using terracotta clay, just like the Romans did.
Taraneh’s heart in exile is now housed in a clay temple, which gently carries the weight of beautiful memories of her hometown, Shiraz. This temple, with a natural-coloured body and a dome glazed in serene blue, is inspired by the Great Iranian Poet Saadi Shirazi’s tomb, where in its peaceful garden, people go to spend time and find peace.
Taraneh had studied for her MA in London, and three years ago, when her student visa was coming to an end, she faced another difficulty of being an exile: she was seeking a visa to remain in the UK because she didn’t feel safe returning to Iran. At that time, her inability to see the future made her dream of a ‘No-land’, as maybe a game her brain was prompted to play to ease her anxiety: ‘I was thinking if no-land existed, I could go and live there. At the time, I didn’t have a studio; I had some clay in my room. I started making small clay balls to calm myself. After a while, when they were piling up, it started to look like soil. I thought this could be the soil of no-land.’ She made a container for these tiny balls, which are in that container right now as a metaphor for how much time she spent thinking about ‘Finding a way to stay here, not being able to go back home.’
As soon as Taraneh had access to a studio, she organised workshops and invited people to make soil for this no-land, and as an ongoing piece, participants from her workshops continue to make small pieces that help them feel at home, ‘from strawberries to a roast dinner’. Some of those works are also on display in the exhibition.
On the second anniversary of her immigration, she realised ‘how much her life had changed’, and identified seven concepts that had changed or gained new meanings: grief, otherness, freedom, prosperity, loneliness, peacefulness, and yearning. She created seven artworks, each titled with one of those concepts – Concepts That Changed Deeply After Immigration, as she calls it.
Otherness’s dome-like form is interrupted by multiple openings; the interior of the artwork is glazed in blue, and you see a blue glaze at each opening. However, not all of them clearly show the artwork’s inner surface. Some openings ‘fool you’ into thinking it’s the inner surface. ‘This is how I feel sometimes when I’m having conversations with people here,’ says Taraneh. She explains, ‘how cultural differences sometimes’ make a part of her ‘not accessible’ to some people. Of course, it’s not every case. She highlights the ‘unique and special connections’ she has here in the UK, and there are ‘people who are coming into her life’ who can see ‘her for who she is’.
Freedom differs from the others in colour and form. Taraneh explains, ‘I wanted it to be free of the obligation to form. It’s got surprising bits poking out of it, which I think is a sign of freedom to be able to take any shape or form. It’s got multiple openings, it’s airy, not closing you’, describing the red floor as ‘a way of showing so many people who have been killed in Iran fighting for freedom. It’s a beautiful concept, but it also requires a lot of sacrifices.’
Grief is a dome-shaped artwork, glazed blue on the exterior. Inner walls are left in natural colour to allow-through Taraneh’s drawings of scenes in Iran: ‘Trees that I’ve missed in Shiraz, the highest mountain in Iran, Mount Damavand, the buildings, the people…’ You can see these drawings through the large opening she made with a hammer, leaving the broken fragments on show alongside. Why would an artist hammer her own artwork before it goes into the kiln? She explains, ‘I think grief has two aspects to it. One is grieving over what you’ve lost, the other is grieving over what it could have been. By breaking it before it went into the kiln, I never got to see what could have been if it were full.’
Yearning is a collapsing piece with ‘windows crying’. There’s an opening at the top, but because of the glass display casing, I can’t get close enough to the artworks to see inside clearly. Taraneh kindly explains to me that it holds a broken tree, two mountains, and a small pool called a hows, generally found in the gardens of old houses in warm areas in Iran. Are they symbols of what Taraneh wants to be surrounded by? She states the heaviest part of being far from home, as she continues: ‘It’s collapsing, you are longing for it, but it doesn’t really exist in the sense that you miss it.’
Having completed her Masters degree in Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art in 2023, Molly Wickett’s practice focuses on neurodivergence, ecology, time, and interdependence. For this exhibition, she imagines a post-apocalyptic landscape through a queer and disabled lens. She understands the apocalypse through Greek etymology, as an act of uncovering and revealing; not an ending, but the beginning of a world that allows ‘others’ to exist. In this imaginary world, time flows at its own pace: a disabled body is not valued for its endurance and productivity, which are shaped by a linear, efficiency-driven understanding of time.
Wickett works with what remains after the waters recede: fallen trees, fungi growing on dead wood, and barren soil. In this imagined landscape, death brings a new life. A smell fills the exhibition space: the scent of dead or possibly burnt trees, deepening the sensory experience of the tactile sculptures.
Kasia Oleskiewicz is an international artist, currently moving between Poland, Switzerland, and Scotland. As I walked around her exhibition, Any Body Home, I felt like I was witnessing her determination to be present with her fear. ‘Moving from reflections on the paralysing fear of not being safe and the commemoration of victims of violence in shared spaces, the exhibition turns toward imagining a different reality: one in which any body, human and nonhuman alike, is and feels safe anywhere they go.’
In the central piece, Manifesto for Regaining Space, she achieves this perspective by imagining a body beyond our identifications, ‘whether based on gender, species, nationality, ability or any other label.’
Manifesto for Regaining Space is an interactive installation that invites viewers to a discussion in a very domestic, familiar space, on a blanket, with a pair of slippers from anybody’s home, inviting us to have a bite of a vegan biscuit and write in a notebook. The sculpture looks wounded – the carpet is worn near the centre of the sculpture, which I perceive as a stomach, as if it might have bled.
Her works, born of fear of not being safe in public spaces, remind me of a slogan that still echoes in the streets of Istanbul, the city I once called home: ‘We’re not leaving the nights, the streets, or the squares!’ This slogan from Turkish feminists gets its power from turning a collective fear into a strength to reclaim the public space. All four exhibitions in Summerhall do the same thing in a public space, stating that they exist and are not blinded by mainstream narratives.
With thanks to Omur Sahin Keyif for this review.
