Arter is hosting Jackie Matisse: Kite Time exhibition, curated by Gill Eatherle. Kite Time spreads over Arter’s high and low, light and dark spaces where Jackie Matisse’s kites can reveal themselves for the very first time in all their splendor indoors as they fly down from head to tail.
A machine, positioned on the wall at the far end of the entrance corridor in Gallery -1, turns a paper tail in an endless moving loop of color from ceiling to floor, accompanied by soft creaking and swooshing sounds.
Organized within the scope of events parallel to the exhibition, “Marine Tails Performances”, movement design and management of which is undertaken by Polly Motley, and video and live image design of which is undertaken by Molly Davies, will be held on 23, 24, 25 and 26 May 2024, every evening at 19:30 at Arter’ It is also carried out free of charge.
Matisse in Istanbul
Jackie Matisse (1931–2021) flew her signature kites over Istanbul’s skies nearly fifty years ago during a 1976 trip. At the time, she likely never imagined that her Rainbow [Arc-en-Ciel, 1983] kites, now displayed in vibrant colors in the front windows of the Arter building, would entice passersby to enter and explore the Kite Time exhibition.
Born into a family with a profound artistic heritage, Jackie Matisse seems to have paid no heed to her grandfather Henri Matisse’s advice from 1950, when he drew his three grandchildren on the ceiling of his apartment in Nice, France on the occasion of his 80th birthday: “Don’t become an artist if you can do anything else. It is too difficult a road”. Jackie Matisse’s journey began in 1962 when she accidentally lost a kite she had acquired among the trees in a forest – a fortuitous event which had a significant impact on her artistic path. Drawing upon the delicate skills she also honed from assisting Marcel Duchamp to assemble his portable miniature monograph Box in a Valise [Boîte-en-valise] between 1959 and 1968, Jackie Matisse undertook a creative odyssey that spanned mediums and continents through clouds, underwater, across paper, wood and cloth surfaces, by using crayons and brushes. She never stopped cutting, glueing, knotting, folding, sewing, assembling, printing, tying, drawing, sorting, collecting, soldering, and ultimately flying her kites, which she perceived as a dynamic form capable of setting art in motion across the world.
