akiko suzuki, japan: dada quilt project

The long anticipated opening took place on May 19, 2016 at the Cowell theater in the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. The works of 19 international Global Art Project (GAP) artists are on display as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival, which is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Dada arts movement. The featured attraction is Mystery of Anger & Love & Delusion – Soap Bubbles, the 5 x 32 ft quilt created by Akiko. The other artists sent fragments of their personal artworks to Akiko, who arranged these ‘frags’ into this intricate mixed medium, collaborative project.

“The moment when I opened the international postal package full of all the frags which were sent from the GAP members throughout the world, they all spoke at once. ‘Inside, outside.’ Man Ray whispered beside me, ‘Unconcerned but not Indifferent.’ We that have been dominated by the 1% of the world, facing emptiness every day, surrendering in suicide, are covered by money, desire and gossip, sprinkled in radiation, eat dirty crop pesticides and genetic manipulation, make war, make refugees. Tomorrow, the world is cracking big and would create a new life from the open mouth that female genitalia turned into. Those completely covering the sky of dark full of defiance and ridicule, whether hope or soap bubbles.” Akiko Suzuki

Global Art Project, founded by Carl Heyward, USA, has fostered international collaborative practice in various incarnations since 2014. It became a formal group out of the KNEE(jerk) Fragmentation (mail art) PROJECT in 2014 with workshops, exhibitions and studio interaction in Venice, Treviso, Lecce and Rome(Italy), as well as Mazatlan(Mexico)and the United States.