Gift Science Archive began as a performance aimed at making space in the home studio. Unlike many other artists who maintain a working space separate from their domestic space, Sands blurs those lines.
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In so doing, he draws on feminist praxis at the threshold between art and life — a threshold that is characterised by its domesticity. In the artist’s work, his home surrounds, as well as his familial and kinship networks, appear again and again, from the role of his husband ROBIN as photographer for many of his performance and performative projects, to the appearance of his mother, father and sister in early signature works. Outside of his own family, Sands also tracks the kin relations of key feminist artists like HANNAH WILKE or Eva Hesse in his work, as well as the conceptual framework that contours our contemporary understandings of art/life boundaries and domesticity itself.
Art as all that affective LABOR.
Life as that daily mark-making practice unfolding in DRAWINGS + SKETCHES. – MH.
Image of Studio object
“Me and my dad (Ragen), showing him a drawing of “the prodigal son returns” from art school (Pratt). My dad makes art for himself, and for us. So did my great-grandmother. When it was necessary for everything to be called feminist art in the 70s for the movement, I was already familiar with women art. My examples were never people who were in the market, and it was never my intent.” – SMW.
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“Backyard in Kansas, sister (Laura) and dog (Zoe).” – SMW.
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Self-printed. Photo of Sands mother (Marjorie) at the pancake restaurant in NY.
“Construction of your own history. What you remember and what you don’t remember. The history that I feel part of is abstract expression.” – SMW and AC.
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Location: Sands and Robin’s apartment (Swammerdamstraat). Photographer: self-shot. Shown in an ‘off Pride’ festival in Zürich, Switzerland in 2009.
From 27. April 2020 (WeTransfer notes): “7 images including the cat (Betsie) on the bed and Robin and my body are an homage series to Joan Semmel’s work ‘Intimacy-Autonomy’ from 1974. She has never seen them (Joan) and probably never will.” – SMW. From 24. March 2020 (in email exchange): “here are the images too (just found them) which were printed fairly large and hung in sequence… i think there was only one image of our former cat Betsie in the sun… … then the Eva Hesse book on the floor and then the three nude images of us in the sun on the bed… … .i am going to start making domestic images again especially now that we are stuck inside! (but with sun, thank goddess!); https://artschaft.com/2018/09/... THIS IS THE JOAN SEMMEL PAINTING IMAGE FROM MY BIRTH YEAR ‘INTIMACY/AUTONOMY’ WHICH I ADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDORE AND WHICH WE ARE REFERRING TO IN THESE IMAGES :)” – SMW.
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Inventorying session + invited archivist (IA) meeting – 15.09.20. “My grandmother was an abstract expressionist painter, and she never exhibited her work in galleries, it was only for herself, and she only started painting when she was in her forties. This is the energy that I wanted to be part of.” – SMW.
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Rijksakademie Internal Open Studios – 07.09.20. “Part of what I do is giving things away, which is why I don’t like the market-and why I haven’t been very successful.” – SMW. “Who does?” – Anon. “No one likes the market!” – SMW, AC and Anon.
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The spiral form comes from a portrait of Eva Hesse by Mel Bochner from c. 1966.
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Photographer: Radna Rumping
Date: 24.07.20. Location: house Sands and Robin, Swammerdamstraat 4E, Amsterdam. Images taken right after a recorded conversation with Sands and Robin, featuring cat Duman, Robin and Sands on the couch, and self-portrait in mirror of Radna.
“Sands and Robin together on the couch, a few minutes after I stopped recording. A bit tired after talking for 2 hours and 20 minutes, but also excited and happy-it felt like everyone in the room knew this was an important conversation somehow. SMW and RWM surrounded by works they have been collecting, and a framed drawing from Sands on the left.” – RR.
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Photographer: Robin Wassink-Murray
Location: Moen Island, Denmark at Frederikke Hansen’s former house.
“I love my ass/hole but these are very specific parts of the body…” – SMW.
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Written by SMW on the occasion of the Rijks 150-year anniversary publication.
Inventorying session + invited archivist (IA) meeting – 15.09.20. “Did anybody ever ask you why you are archiving? Why bother? [… ] Why an archive? Why a painting, a sculpture? Why get up in the morning? Why breathe?” – SMW.
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Photographer: Robin Wassink-Murray
“Above: Carolee had a knot in her hair. We were in her hotel room in Frankfurt where we met for her retrospective in 2017. She asked me if I could help to comb her hair and untangle the knot, and she insisted that Robin photograph it as a performance. Below: In 2000 in the first house that Robin and I shared together in Amsterdam, which was 19 square meters, I was on the phone arranging a purchase from Ronald Feldman Gallery of ‘Handle with Care,’ a work by Hannah Wilke. As Robin often does, he documented the action as a work.” – SMW.
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Listings connecting to the keyword “Domesticity” (676)
01981-1993…
Slides
Sculpture
1993-1995/2019
Image of Studio object
Documentation of SMW’s earliest mature works, which were digitized on occasion of the If I Can’t Dance Kick-off Introductory event and used in SMW’s ‘Up To And Including His Limits’ lecture performance (October 2019). *Note: images can be printed or made into photo-objects upon request.
“These are indeed my earliest works that I have documents of. I had some even earlier works that are with my parents in Topeka, Kansas. A lot of this digitized work is there too. It’s mainly from the period at Pratt Institute, also when Carolee Schneemann was my teacher. It was a super hard period, but out of it came this for me diamond like work. Some of these bleed into time at the Rietveld Academie and De Ateliers in the very first four months I was there and into 1995. I still count these works as being very foundational to what I do and who I am. When I sell from this period the work is more expensive than work I am making now.” – SMW.
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02013-1993…
Slides
1993-1995/2019
Image of Studio object
Documentation of SMW’s earliest mature works, which were digitized on occasion of the If I Can’t Dance Kick-off Introductory event and used in SMW’s ‘Up To And Including His Limits’ lecture performance (October 2019). *Note: images can be printed or made into photo-objects upon request.
“These are indeed my earliest works that I have documents of. I had some even earlier works that are with my parents in Topeka, Kansas. A lot of this digitized work is there too. It’s mainly from the period at Pratt Institute, also when Carolee Schneemann was my teacher. It was a super hard period, but out of it came this for me diamond like work. Some of these bleed into time at the Rietveld Academie and De Ateliers in the very first four months I was there and into 1995. I still count these works as being very foundational to what I do and who I am. When I sell from this period the work is more expensive than work I am making now.” – SMW.
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02045-1993…
Slides
Painting
1993-1995/2019
Image of Studio object
Documentation of SMW’s earliest mature works, which were digitized on occasion of the If I Can’t Dance Kick-off Introductory event and used in SMW’s ‘Up To And Including His Limits’ lecture performance (October 2019). *Note: images can be printed or made into photo-objects upon request.
“These are indeed my earliest works that I have documents of. I had some even earlier works that are with my parents in Topeka, Kansas. A lot of this digitized work is there too. It’s mainly from the period at Pratt Institute, also when Carolee Schneemann was my teacher. It was a super hard period, but out of it came this for me diamond like work. Some of these bleed into time at the Rietveld Academie and De Ateliers in the very first four months I was there and into 1995. I still count these works as being very foundational to what I do and who I am. When I sell from this period the work is more expensive than work I am making now.” – SMW.
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02077-1993…
Slides
Distributed notes
Carolee Schneemann
1993-1995/2019
Image of Studio object
Documentation of SMW’s earliest mature works, which were digitized on occasion of the If I Can’t Dance Kick-off Introductory event and used in SMW’s ‘Up To And Including His Limits’ lecture performance (October 2019). *Note: images can be printed or made into photo-objects upon request.
“These are indeed my earliest works that I have documents of. I had some even earlier works that are with my parents in Topeka, Kansas. A lot of this digitized work is there too. It’s mainly from the period at Pratt Institute, also when Carolee Schneemann was my teacher. It was a super hard period, but out of it came this for me diamond like work. Some of these bleed into time at the Rietveld Academie and De Ateliers in the very first four months I was there and into 1995. I still count these works as being very foundational to what I do and who I am. When I sell from this period the work is more expensive than work I am making now.” – SMW.
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02157-1995…
Thought works
Letterhead Drawings
Pam Butler, Tracey Emin
1995-1998
Image of Studio object
Like the horse drawings, the letterhead drawings are not always on letterhead, but share amongst them use of the handwritten text.
“I printed this stationary to use for my business, but never really used it for that. I used it to start making drawings on. My Mom had sent me fruit scented markers with animals printed on them, which I had used in my childhood. I used these to make the drawings, declarative statements to find my way.” – SMW.
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02189-1995…
Thought works
Letterhead Drawings
Pam Butler, Tracey Emin
1995-1998
Image of Studio object
Like the horse drawings, the letterhead drawings are not always on letterhead, but share amongst them use of the handwritten text.
“I printed this stationary to use for my business, but never really used it for that. I used it to start making drawings on. My Mom had sent me fruit scented markers with animals printed on them, which I had used in my childhood. I used these to make the drawings, declarative statements to find my way.” – SMW.
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00052-1993…
Collage
Mrs. Murray
1993-1995
Image of Studio object
Self-printed.
“My mother holding a coat in a pancake restaurant in NY. I was working at the MET. The Unicorn tapestry. I was an intern, I would give tours and research how the nuns would live back in the 1400s. Maybe it’s me who doesn’t trust whenever someone has an alternative aesthetic and sometimes the behavior doesn’t match it. It’s much weirder when you are punk on the inside. I feel like I have a multi-colored mohawk even if I don’t look it. When it doesn’t match, you pay more attention to the behaviour. I was never so good at maintaining appearances. Gathering power through specific aesthetics. We construct our image or our image construct us somehow. Constructed image is not my strong point.” – AC and SMW.
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00084-1993…
Collage
Vija Celmins
1993-1995
Image of Studio object
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00116-2009…
Photographs
Performalist…
2009
Image of Studio object
Photographer: Robin Wassink-Murray
Location: Moen Island, Denmark at Frederikke Hansen’s former house.
“Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings always seemed to be about confronting and conquering nature. I guess this is open to interpretation and I don’t know that much about it. I’ve never gone that deep into it… I want to be part of nature. Not confront it.” – SMW.
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00148-2009…
Photographs
Performalist…
2009
Image of Studio object
Photographer: Robin Wassink-Murray
Location: Moen Island, Denmark at Frederikke Hansen’s former house.
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00180-2009…
Photographs
Performalist…
Hannah Wilke
2009
Image of Studio object
Photographer: Robin Wassink-Murray
Location: Moen Island, Denmark at Frederikke Hansen’s former house.
“Hannah used to talk about being spontaneous and I think this is mainly what it is all about, being spontaneous and not planning too much when working. Like grooving with the energies of the universe will provide ultimate meaning.” – SMW.
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00212-2000…
Philosophical…
Working 2000
2000
Image of Studio object
“I refuse to destroy things.” – SMW.
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00246-c200…
Philosophical…
Working 2000
c. 2001
Image of Studio object
Inventorying session + invited archivist (IA) meeting – 15.09.20. “It was all about boys clubs back then.” – SMW.
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00282-c200…
Philosophical…
Working 2000
c. 2001
Image of Studio object
“It would have been so weird that this would’ve been seen after I was dead, by someone who didn’t know what it was.” – SMW. “They are lively, and desperate, which I like.” – SMW.
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00316-2000…
Philosophical…
Working 2000
2000
Image of Studio object
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