“We must be aware of the dangers that lurk around assumptions.” Ramolen Laruan questions the issues of our time, using personal knowledge and experiences as coordinates to orient herself. With the Philippines as a homeland and having moved to Canada as a child, she has had to come to terms with what lies between these distant poles, trying to find a balance that is not always so easy to achieve. The (ongoing) artistic result is a fluid Cartesian plane that moves between family photos, textiles, installations, texts, videoart, objects, and results in highlighting the legacy of the past.

Canada, despite its multicultural population, is a settler-colonial nation that upholds Western narratives. Growing up, Ramolen only experienced home culture within the walls of her own home. Indeed, this blurred perception of what belongs to what has influenced her artistic practice and thinking:

“Living as an immigrant, in a country that is itself a colony created in the space that was previously inhabited by Indigenous Peoples, means that I am an immigrant in a white space that was not a white space.”

Questioning positioning

As an artist, she considers it crucial to problematise the act of looking. The priority she gives to her ongoing life experience is something that those who come across Ramolen’s art can perceive, can look at, but not everyone can see, because it is her position. The willingness to give relevance to the issue of “taking a stand” really characterises Ramolen’s approach, as does the intention to always remaining open to changing it. Oscillating between scholars such as D.W. Du Bois and Stuart Hall, her perspective has awareness as its only fixed engine. Aware of the delicate nature of all these aspects, she mixes them with her studies which also relate to Sara Ahmed. Needless to say, everything is potentially open to including different truths, be they memories, testimonies, family photos, videos, objects, texts, etc. After all, Stuart Hall stated, “What we say is always in context, positioned.”

images by PILOTENKUECHE or supplied by artist

“I felt brown when I was in a white space.” This sentence opens up several levels of discussion, as does her work. It would be easy, therefore, to assume that the “past” is a key element of her work. Nevertheless, we have to be careful: the point is precisely the legacy of it. She uses personal family photos because her art aims to be unambiguous in order to address very specific issues.

Ramolen at PK

Ramolen asks, “What is the concept when the function has disappeared?” In this sense, turning a wet page, is an artwork which can give us some peculiar input. What kind of questions should we ask ourselves when dealing with histor(ies) narrated through story telling? Far from looking for easy answers, Ramolen’s residence at PILOTENKUECHE is set to be a multifaceted experience. After all, stories, the legacy of the past and memories, are elements that are certainly not lacking in Leipzig. 

Daria Passaponti

Fleshy Gesture : Texture

Vernissage Sat 31 Aug 7-10 PM
Open Sun 1  – Wed 4 Sept  4-8 PM

Alte Handelsschule
Giesserstr 75
04229 Leipzig

Abandoned New Position

Vernissage Sat 21 Sept 7-10 PM
Sun 22  – Wed 25 Sept 4-8 PM

PILOTENKUECHE
Franz-Flemming-Str 9
04179 Leipzig