Observatory on Deculturalisation. Chapter 1

Curated by Zaira Oram collective (Francesca Brusa, Francesca Ceccherini, Eleonora Stassi)

oxyd – Kunsträume Winterthur, Switzerland, 23 February - 23 April 2023

The exhibition and experimental research platform Observatory On Deculturalization. Chapter 1 is based on the work of Italian feminist art historian Carla Lonzi (1931-1982) and her use of the term "deculturalization."

The inauguration is opened by Zehra Doğan's performance ANKEBUT (Female Spider): a new work that focuses on the theme of female resistance by interrogating the relationship women develop with their bodies and the earth. The work is composed of a web of human hair on rays of barbed wires, the same ones that constitute walls and barriers in numerous geographies around the world, still erected for the purpose of dividing lands and making it illegal for humans to be present. As a form of opposition to the dominant male power system, spider web weaving becomes an existential metaphor for the resistance and generative power of which women, like female spiders, are capable.