#6. Rebecca Jagoe
Clinging Love
Speaking with rocks is a recurring fascination in the work of Rebecca Jagoe: as an act and a methodology, a vehicle for speculating upon the simultaneity of ancient and present-tense feeling. Their explorations across a range of writing and time-based projects of the interrelations of language, land and communally-minded strategies of existing-otherwise made them a natural fit for the Artes Mundi 10 journal, which binds together the diverse research-based practices of primarily Welsh/Wales-based artists, informed by the AM10 exhibition. Allusions to Naomi Rincón Gallardo’s films at Chapter, Empedocles’ fragments and south Wales geology make up just some throughlines of this richly rewarding, polyvocal and poetic essay.
Mae’r syniad o siarad â cherrig yn ail-ymddangos eto ac eto yng ngwaith Rebecca Jagoe: fel gweithred bob-dydd, a ffordd o fyfyrio ar gyd-bresenoldeb yr hynafol, y presennol a’r dychmygus. Mae ei archwiliadau, mewn sgwennu a chyfryngau arbrofol, o’r ffyrdd mae iaith, tir a strategaethau o fodoli-fel-arall yn cydblethu, yn gweddu’n berffaith gyda holl ethos y gyfres hon o gomisiynau’n ymateb at linynnau thematig Artes Mundi 10. Ymhlith y cyfeiriadau mae darn Rebecca yn cwmpasu mae trioleg Naomi Rincón Gallardo yn Chapter, myfyrdodau’r athronydd Empedocles a hanes daearegol de Cymru – mae’n ysgrif aml-leisiol ac emosiynol, y dylai pawb ei ddarllen.
How strange, to see stone as inactive, inert, unfeeling matter. How strange, to see stone as lacking in feeling. A building material, a surface to be carved, cold and heartless, a dead substance, not a being who can and does act in the world. You think of softness as yielding and hardness as rejection because your touch language, your erotic grammar, is tied to human flesh, to softening and opening and dilation and wet and. You want to try and read below the obvious metaphors, you want to give the cliff a chance to reply.
Rebecca Jagoe uses text, performance, and sculpture to examine how Western-imperialist conceptions of the ‘human’ inform experiences of illness, madness, and gender. A former recipient of Wales in Venice 10 (2022-3) and Freelands (2021-2) fellowships, Jagoe recently presented work at g39, Site Gallery, Mostyn and Wysing Arts Centre, and in Tallinn, London and Riga. With Sharon Kivland, they edited ON VIOLENCE (2018) and ON CARE (2020), published by Ma Bibliothèque. www.rebeccajagoe.com
Defnyddia Rebecca Jagoe ffurfiau ysgrifenedig, perfformiadol a cherfluniol i archwilio sut caiff dealltwriaeth ymerodraethol y Gorllewin o’r ‘dynol’ ei liwio gan brofiadau o wallgofrwydd a rhywedd. Maen nhw’n gyn gymrawd gyda Cymru yn Fenis (2022-3) a Freelands (2021-2), ac wedi cyflwyno gwaith gyda g39, Site Gallery, Mostyn a Wysing Arts Centre, ac hefyd yn Llundain, Talinn a Riga. Cyd-olygodd Rebecca ON VIOLENCE (2018) ac ON CARE (2020) gyda Sharon Kivland i’r wasg Ma Bibliothèque. www.rebeccajagoe.com