17 January 2023
The Score (You and I Both Know) sees Professor Vivienne Jabri from Department of War Studies and King's Culture collaborate with contemporary artist Corinne Silva and curator Cécile Bourne-Farrell
The Score (You and I Both Know), a new exhibition exploring the impact of war on populations living in the aftermath of conflict, opens 7 February at The Arcade in Bush House.
The free exhibition forms part of Conflict and Injury, a research project from the Department of War Studies investigating how war inflicts injuries on individuals, communities and their lived environments. The Score (You and I Both Know) is presented by Professor of International Politics Vivienne Jabri and King’s Culture, in collaboration with contemporary artist Corinne Silva and curator Cécile Bourne-Farrell.
Silva draws on years of research and practice in Bosnia and Herzegovina to present this new series of works exploring the consequences of the Bosnian War on bodies, landscapes and memory, as well as the remarkable resilience and solidarity of those affected.
Through an installation of photographs and sound The Score (You and I Both Know) transports viewers to the siege of Sarajevo and the embodied, material and auditory cartography of violence. The deeply resonant exhibition is testimony to injury and resistance in the face of the deliberate targeting of civilian populations in time of war, capturing the scenes and sounds of lived experience during conflict and its aftermath.
Silva’s primary focus is a row of linden trees along the River Miljacka that mark Sarajevo’s former frontline; the only trees that remained in the city after the siege as their location was too dangerous for anyone to risk felling them. As well as being witnesses to the conflict, these trees were also active participants, forming a living shield to sniper fire. Today, their role is immortalised in their trunks and branches which bear the scars of the war. The works are complemented by a haunting voice singing a former Yugoslavian partisan song celebrating the forest as a place of safety.
My work attempts to read and reveal traces of historical violence in the landscape, and the resilience of nature in the face of human conflict. The focus of this exhibition – the tree trunks scarred by shrapnel, with ruptured bark formed around bullets - a reminder that trauma and wounds are still held there, in streets and parks and bodies.
Corinne Silva, Artist
The Score (You and I Both Know) is part of the King’s research project Conflict and Injury, which has had two iterations, Injurious Acts I and II, supported by the Stanley Hoffman Johnson Foundation.
Corinne Silva’s works evoke the multiple ways in which the violence of war leaves its imprint, conceived in the project as ‘injury’. From individual bodies to the material spaces of the cityscape, injury leaves traces that endure across generations. The exhibition is particularly resonant in our contemporary context of war seen once again in Europe, continuing conflict in other regions of the world, and forms of deadly exclusionary politics based on gender and race.
Vivienne Jabri, Professor of International Politics
The first iteration involved working with artists Hrair Sarkissian to create a 16-minute looped sound installation, Deathscape, depicting the sounds of the confined space of an archaeological dig where victims of the Spanish civil war were executed and buried, and now found. Deathscape was included in the British Art Show in 2021 and has been exhibited internationally. The installation reveals the enduring impact of war, on individual bodies, communities and their political spaces, and on the memories of future generations.
For the second iteration, this upcoming exhibition of Silva’s work, The Score (You and I Both Know), interprets the subject differently, focusing on the ways in which targeting in time of conflict inflicts injury to bodies and trees alike. In works that immediately evoke the urban setting of Sarajevo, revealing injury in its multiple manifestations, borne in unpredictable ways, both during and well beyond conflict.
The exhibition is informed by the research and publications of Vivienne Jabri, Professor of International Politics. Jabri’s work focuses on the implications of war and the multiple manifestations of violence and its impact on populations and on international politics. She is currently undertaking a five-year research project, Mapping Injury, funded by UK Research and Innovation, and focusing on the Global South.
The Score (You and I Both Know) depicts wounds as fragments, suggesting that the history of conflict is made up of small pieces that can nevertheless disclose a great deal. The photographs are installed like musical notes of an indelible song.
Cécile Bourne-Farrell, Curator
The Score (You and I Both Know) at the Arcade at Bush House is supported by King's Culture, and is part of the inaugural artistic programme in the Strand Cultural Quarter since the official opening of the Strand Aldwych pedestrianisation. The Strand Cultural Quarter at King’s supports creative learning, showcases imaginative research collaborations and invites local communities to connect with the university through a varied programme of events and activities.
The exhibition is supported by King’s Culture, The Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London and i-Portunus EU mobility for artists.
Click here to read an interview between artist Corinne Silva and curator Cécile Bourne-Farrell.
The Score (You and I Both Know)
7 February - 3 March 2023
Free Entry
Opening times: 10am – 6pm, Monday - Saturday
Address: The Arcade Space, Bush House South Entrance, King’s College London, The Strand, London, WC2B 4PJ
Professor of International Politics
A new exhibition by Corinne Silva. Curated by Cécile Bourne-Farrell and Professor Vivienne Jabri.
