HFBK

Porous Container is a site-specific installation that negotiates craft and mass production, individuality and universality, intimacy and conformity. Two works confront one another through their layered connotations and distinct modes of expression—ceramic and textile.

In contrast to the coolness of household appliances and consumer electronics on the ground floor of MediaMarkt, the textile evokes the organic, the warm, and the soft. The associations woven into fabric and cloth are manifold, extending from the domestic and the private to forms of labour historically coded as feminine, as well as to notions of connectedness, resilience, coverings, and skins. The denser a fabric, the more opaque and resistant it becomes. Lace, by contrast, is deliberately perforated, its openings serving both decorative and artistic purposes. In her installation, Gesa Troch brings together dyed, densely woven fabrics and prints of delicate, perforated lace collected from members of her family. Although these two manifestations of textile appear almost contradictory in function despite sharing the same material basis, they also point to the medium’s ambivalent readings. On the one hand, textile labour has long been devalued through its association with femininity—a devaluation that continues to be reproduced. On the other, it constitutes a highly sophisticated and ancient art and craft tradition worthy of recognition. The material’s ubiquitous presence in the form of clothing also recalls global production chains that often stand in stark contrast to any appreciation of human labour. The industrial manufacture of lace, for instance, bears little resemblance to lacemaking, crocheting, or weaving, and is frequently carried out under precarious conditions for both workers and the environment.

The second component of Porous Container consists of ceramic objects that imitate spent fireworks batteries—the kind commonly found scattered across urban spaces in the first days of the new year. Large quantities of soggy cardboard remnants, dispersed throughout the city.

For some, they embody the celebration of a significant transition: the turn of the year, together with the wishes, hopes, and dreams associated with it. For others, they represent a danger; the loud explosions evoke memories of violence, while wildlife and the environment suffer from the overwhelming noise. In their structure of circular tubes that remain after detonation, they resemble the repetitive ornamentation of woven textiles. Cracker transforms these otherwise softened cardboard objects, encountered in public space after New Year’s Eve, into initially rigid yet ultimately fragile ceramic forms.

Troch’s installation reads as a counterpoint to its loud surroundings, which themselves point to mass production and consumer culture. The now-silent fireworks batteries, together with the references to textile practices and craftsmanship, invite reflection on the contexts and codings of their materialities in relation to their setting at the entrance to Hamburg’s main shopping street. The exhibition title likewise refers to these ambivalent inscriptions of material: a container initially suggests a standardized vessel made of a hard material—robust and interchangeable. Once it becomes porous, however, it begins to lose its original function, becoming permeable and unstable. This porosity becomes the connecting element through which the works communicate with one another.