We at Lower East have done the design for the exhibition “Chineses Whispers“ at Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark. We have been working on the idea of building an exhibition landscape with transport boxes – that supports the exhibition’s concept of the journey of stories from one country to another. The artworks are on display at the transport boxes, which emphasize in a raw and simple way that the works and stories have traveled throughout the world to reach Ebeltoft.

On the wall we have painted a huge world map stating with red dots where the artists live and work. We really liked the work, the cooperation with the museum, and are very satisfied with the result. If you want to see the exhibition it runs until March 2020.

CHINESE WHISPERS. Erin Dickson

Inspired by the childhood game of the same name, Chinese Whispers is a project initiated by British artist Erin Dickson, which explores issues on national identity across borders and continents involving 15 international artists working with glass.

For centuries, glassmakers have worked in glass factories or have been in glass production far from their homes, and taken their knowledge and their craft from one region to another or from country to country. Thus, glass art and the glass society are characteristically transnational. With the transformation of a classic Venetian vessel, Erin Dickson illustrates this exchange between glassmakers across the globe. At the same time, she comments on the global challenges of our time by exposing the misinterpretations, which undeniably result from differences in language and culture.

The exhibition is part of the project ‘From Where We Stand’ – a collaboration between seven Danish art museums on national identity.

Artists represented in the exhibition: Silvano Signoretto (Italy), James Devereux (Great Britain), Hyunsung Cho (Chorea), Sibusiso Mhlanga (Swaziland), Einar & Jamex de la Torre (Mexico), Rasmus Nossbring (Sweden), Zuheir Alkazzaz (Syria/The Netherlands), Mia Lerssi (Denmark), Jing Li (China), Nadège Desgenétez (France/Australia), Petr & Ondrej Novotny (Czech Republic), Kelly O’Dell (USA), Christina Hellevik & Leif Møller Nielsen (Denmark), Bevan Taka (Maori/Sweden), James Maskrey (Great Britain).

 

CHINESE WHISPERS FOR GLASS PRACTITIONERS. 15 artists working with glass are involved in Erin ­Dickson’s Chinese Whispers, which started in Italy, where Erin Dickson saw a classic Venetian vessel at the Murano Glass Museum in 2015. Erin Dickson asked the Italian glassblower Silvano ­Signoretto to recreate the vessel in black glass from a photo, and then describe his working process with 100 words. Using Google Translate, his description was then translated from Italian to the native language of the next artist in line. From this auto generated translation, the next artist would then create his or her version of the vessel and so on. The results of this ‘whispering game’ for glass ­practitioners are 15 variations of the original vessel, ­interpreted and recreated by artists across the globe.

 

CHINESE WHISPERS. The expression Chinese Whispers is commonly used in many English speaking countries around the world as the name of a very simple game. A person whispers a sentence into the ear of the person sitting next to him or her, and the next person passes the whisper on to the person next to him or her and so on until the last person says the sentence out loud. By now the initial sentence will be totally changed beyond recognition.