Positions: Lena Longefay

Foto: courtesy the artist

Foto: Myung Feyen

Foto: Myung Feyen

Foto: courtesy the artist

Location: Stroom, Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
When: 5 November - 11 December 2022
Open: Wednesday - Sunday: 12:00 - 17:00 hrs

Lena Longefay shows multiple installations which represent her 'economy of sharing and giving'. She aims at generating communities, offering different perspectives on being together by focusing on details, discrepancies or daily habits. Starting point is the concept of a libidinal economy based on Hélène Cixous' feminist manifest The Laugh of the Medusa. In it, Cixous encourages giving and sharing as opposed to seizing and saving, which she defines as a more masculine way of engaging with the world. 

At Stroom, Longefay's installations are presented in two spaces. Near the front window, the piece An Economy of Inactivity mixes hanging beads with images, texts, references and keywords. In French the expression ‘enfiler des perles' means doing something that is useless; an act of wasting your time on pointless and unnecessary details. For Longefay it is a gentle displacement away from a masculine economy, and the start of a new, sharing platform. Close by you can listen a.o. to songs made up and sung together with friends after reading the Manifesto for the Appropriation of our Own Creativity by the Italian feminist collective Le Nemesiache. In the rear space of Stroom the interactive 'peintures-masques' invite you to step into a canvas and become the other. They are inspired by details depicting female figures; respectively on Roger van der Weyden's Tryptich of Crucifixion (1440-1445) and Tina Modotti's photograph Woman with a Flag (1928). 

During the presentation, Longefay organizes a number of events in which sharing and giving with fellow artists are paramount. The results/remnants of these are displayed on the shelves in the entrance. Lena Longefay (currently based in between The Hague and France) considers her multidisciplinary practice as a composition, a constant research process of shaping and sharing. She considers her practice and its presentations as platforms of generosity. They are created to spread among her audience inspiration and the will of doing. 

Her publication Fermenting Affinities: Economy, Micropolitics and Art Practices of Friendship is now for sale in our bookshop.

Positions
Stroom Den Haag started a new program line this year under the title Positions. Positions features artists based in The Hague and showcases both new work and work in progress, offering an insight into the great diversity of their practice. During the year, next to exhibitions, Stroom provides a platform for additional events like experimental presentations, lectures and performances.