6 November 2021–20 January 2022
The opening takes place on 6 November 2021 and the exhibition is on view through 20 January 2022.
Visit this page to learn more about the opening program and how to visit.
Casco Art Institute in partnership with Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund 2020/2021 is proud to present The Mother Mountain Institute by Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide), an ongoing artwork and artistic research project that collects testimonies from mothers who have lost their child to transnational and transracial adoption. These testimonies have been processed by the artist into a sound piece.
The project presents itself as a room-size installation work that invites the viewer to enter, listen, and honor the otherwise-erased stories of the mothers in the company of the spiritual presence of the mountain as the ultimate protector.
At Casco The Mother Mountain Institute shares the stories of two mothers from South Korea and Bangladesh whose children were stolen and trafficked for transnational and transracial adoption. The centerpiece of the installation is a mountain, whose presence evokes a spiritual entity, a patient shelter, and a companion for meditative walks who might provide answers to impossible questions transcending reason or logic. Inside this space representing the universe, a woman’s voice narrates the story of a mother and in alternation the mountain speaks. As an ongoing project, The Mother Mountain Institute mobilizes us to intervene in the current transnational adoption system that embodies colonial order and capitalist logic, and ultimately imagine what an institution could be like if based on motherhood and the mountain, as a resource of consolation and wisdom.
The installation is accompanied by twenty drawings of mountains made from 2015 to now, undertaken at mountains known for their spiritual qualities.
Artist Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide) has been creating an extensive body of work that embeds her critical inquiries in affective, intimate, and haptic forms of painting, installation works, and video-essays, presenting them on many significant national and international art platforms. The Mother Mountain Institute is one of Chang’s works that epitomizes her practice and also poses questions on the position and power of art to challenge existing institutions and their system. This work in particular inspires Casco’s long standing inquiry into alternative economic and social structures for long-term, ongoing, and socially engaged artworks that involve community and require care, maintenance, and sustainability.
For more information about The Mother Mountain Institute visit www.mothermountaininstitute.org and www.sarasejinchang.com
Image description: A small mountain features in the centre of a circle in a dynamic space with a rotating planetary system on the roof. Credit: Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide), The Mother Mountain Institute, kinetic sound installation, 2017-ongoing, photography the artist.
