Worlds within Worlds (2022-2023)

Worlds Within Worlds was an experimental group show format, curated by Jelena Tamindžija Donnart, resulting in a touring show from Spring 2022 until Autumn 2023. The exhibition was shaped around a month-long residence at CCA in Andraxt, Mallorca, and was exhibited at the CCA Kunsthalle, and then traveled to Museum of Modern Art, Dubrovnik and later to the Croatian Association of Fine Artists in Zagreb.

The residency brought together the five artists—Erlund, Stephen Kent, Igor Eškinja, Mark Požlep, and Josep Maynou—who left behind their quotidian routines not just to occupy new studio spaces but to form an experimental communal existence. This shared life encompassed everything from preparing meals and sourcing materials to deep discussions about their artistic practices, fostering a dynamic interplay between individual creation and collective experience.

In this setting, Erlund was central to the evolving narrative, a Decameron-like interplay of ideas and stories shaped through late-night conversations punctuated by the sounds of clinking glasses and cutlery. Her work, which interrogates the relationship between objects and humans, and challenges anthropocentric perspectives, brought a profound layer to the residency's dialogue. Through her sculptures, drawings, and sound installations, Erlund explored the interplay between materiality and human experience, prompting reflections on how we inhabit and perceive our surroundings.

This residency allowed all participants to deepen their practices and explore new dimensions of inquiry, but Erlund’s approach uniquely bridged tactile and conceptual realms. Her contributions provoked thoughts on the intersections of form, sound, and the human condition, resonating in discussions about the hyperproduction of images (Stephen Kent), visual diaries constructed from everyday objects (Josep Maynou), spatial perception (Igor Eškinja), and altered realities in video and drawings (Mark Požlep). In this heterotopia of artistic socialization, Erlund’s perspective served as both anchor and catalyst, advancing the collective exploration of the profound questions that art seeks to unravel.

From the catalogue text by Jelena Tamindžija Donnart:

“Sophie Erlund, Stephen Kent, Igor Eškinja, Mark Požlep and Josep Maynou here create their own Decameronish narration, which impinges, every day of the residency, ever more tightly,
on the development of a fabula that unfolds at several levels. Fabula here does not flow linearly, its narrative consisting rather of fragments accumulated during extended evening conversations interrupted by the clinking of glasses and cutlery.

Artist Sophie Erlund devotes herself to these moments, bringing them together in her soundpiece she calls “One month and two burners” (2023). In this work we have the occasion to hear fragments of conversations, which are sometimes intelligible, sometimes identifiable only by voices in the distance, the laughter of people conversing, profound statements and quotes from philosophers with jokes, muttering and humming, the sound of work on materials: drilling, scraping, sawing and ambiental sound. Interwoven into the deafening cacophony are moments of calm, morning stillness accompanied with the incidental song of migrating birds on their way south or the half-wild goats that dominate the landscape of the Serra de Tramuntana mountain chain, the nocturnal rustling of leaves and the calm of late hours filled with long moonshine. We respond to the accumulation of fragments of the separate moments in the piece as to an abstract poem, an ode to a period. Although sculpturally located in the space of a group exhibition, the powerful impact of the acoustic work is manifested in the sculptural formation of the mental space of visitors to the show. The soundpiece pervades the exhibition, subtly suggesting the context in which the works were created and perpetuating their point of departure. Like the rushing of a spring that gives rise to the surrounding flora and fauna, the soundpiece of Sophie Erlund is a spiritual source for the creation of other featured works, at the same time embodying the tendency of the artists to engage in communal work, in addition to their independent and individual engagement in their own works.”