Haptic Codes addresses personal histories, languages and borders, set against the backdrop of the digital divide, economic precarity, political instability, conflict and ecological collapse. The haptic tactile characteristics of the artworks include the environmental; the technological and the handmade; the domestic and the global. Keidan Shavrova and Stockwell appropriate the physical materiality and techniques traditionally associated with women’s work in their idiosyncratic and diverging languages.
Their work has also been influenced by their experience of large totalitarian regimes, as opposed to western democracies, with a view to the humanitarian impact and cost of geo-politics, trade, expansionism and political corruption.
Textiles, stitching, sewing, embroidery and threading are juxtaposed with imagery of surveillance, technology, environmentalism, and activism. The artists' conversations have evolved and shifted since 2020 in parallel to the global pandemic to result in an exhibition that demands a slower, more intimate viewing amid urgent pandemic, political and ecological concerns.
The refocusing on the tactile role of art that addresses current issues is critical for Stockwell and Keidan Shavrova. Especially at the time when the world has been starved of the physical and the emotional impact that the direct experience of art in the public realm offers.
