Friendship – Fear – Fate
Year: 2021
Medium: Audio
Dimensions: Variable
Exhibition: Blunt Blades, November 2021 – November 2022. The Higgins Bedford. Bedford. UK. This exhibition is realised with the support of The Higgins Bedford, Bedford Borough Council and Arts Council England.
Friendship-Fear-Fate (2021) is an audio work featuring 3 interviews with three different women about their relationships with knives, from self harming to being a victim of knife crime. This work explores the duality of a knife, serving as a ‘friend’ to one person while being feared by another. Situating this work in the domestic setting at the Higgins House, Lebrusan invites audiences to reflect on the hopes and demons that many of us carry along.
Friendship – Fear – Fate (2021) contains discussion of violence and self-harm which may not be suitable for all audiences. LISTEN HERE
ABOUT BLUNT BLADES. THE EXHIBITION
Often provocative, artist Arabel Lebrusan engages with material culture and the feminine tactile environment, looking into wider issues of power relationships, exploitation and inequality. Blunt Blades extends Lebrusan’s study on material culture, exploring our complex relationships with knives and their varied roles. Blunt Blades began in 2013 when Bedfordshire Police gave the artist 3 crates of confiscated knives and other artefacts. Transforming the metal from these confiscated objects into works that could evoke other emotions, the display examines the ways materials carry inherent meanings and how those meanings can be reshaped. Lebrusan’s artworks, in their myriad forms, do not offer answers to the many issues they raise. Instead, they invite contemplation about object materiality, production of meanings and our shared humanity.
