Eva Mag [signed]

The dynamics of movement. Éva Mag is a rising star on the Nordic art scene. This is the extensive catalogue to “There is a Plan for This” - Mag's first major solo exhibition.


“A recurring theme throughout Éva Mag’s work is the question of standing. Quite obviously this is the topic of the performance turned video Stand up, I said stand up! (2014). In it, the artist attempts to get a life-size clay body to stand, which is of course impossible. Its clay legs buckle and fold at each attempt as Mag continues to struggle with the lifeless body-shaped lump. After a while it becomes ludicrous, almost funny, yet also exceedingly painful. For each of Mag’s attempts, the clay body becomes more animated, more “real,” and the failure to stand all the more distressing for a viewer to see.
There is an intriguing variety in the language around standing. While one can “take a stand,” one can also “not stand it.” This is to say that in standing there is something to learn about protest and about bodies and their abilities. One stands up to what one cannot stand. At the same time, one must be able to “stand it”—as in life and the world—to “stand up to it.” Another way to put this is in the form of a question once posed by the Korean- American writer and artist Johanna Hedva, “How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” To “not stand it” would here be not being able to get out of bed. To “stand up to it” would be the brick through the window.
Not being able to “stand it” has a set of causes. We might call it the world. The cause is how it is organized. Standing up to it would then be taking a stand against a system within which we are all meant to align at a point when we feel we don’t align. This is when we can’t, as it were, get out of bed so as to enter and be part of it. It begs the question what Éva Mag is really doing to this body? Is she helping it? Or is she violently forcing it up on its feet? It is the friction between these two positions that runs through Mag’s work, and that has allowed for her to develop an artistic practice that explores collectivity, individuality, labor, and bodies with and against the world. … ” - excerpt from Theordor Ringborg's text.