The Koppel Project Hive is pleased to present Forging The Self, a group exhibition bringing together four contemporary female artists exploring ways we can forge our individual and collective 'self' in response to current times. They approach their theme through works that aim to interpret what is 'unphysical', giving shape to such body-and-mind-imprinting meta-cultural forces of memory, time and experience.

With an ambitious selection of mediums including moving image, painting and textile works, sculpture, and sound art, the show will be an eclectic, multi-sensory experience exploring the death of the image, the gender of God, geo-cultural memory, self-acceptance, the challenge of sex as taboo, and a matrix for space and consciousness. The artists' individual experiences of womanhood and personhood infuse their approaches to these topics and concerns, bringing an incisive femininity and humanity to what can be impersonal fields of monolithic theory.

Identity has been one of the major subjects of Karpowicz’s work. She has been exploring the potential to formulate a New Human Identity as a response to the dissolution of the foundational myths and institutions upon which our culture is predicated. Karpowicz’s response is framed by the realisation that identities structured around ideologies, belief systems, and difference not only fail to serve us as individuals but bring greater division and polarisation amongst communities. Positing a place beyond the heavy layers of indoctrinated identity, her projects are often a violent expulsion of the past to reconfigure a self through lived experience and joint aspiration to humanity.

For her site-specific installation, Filipovscaia’s work is a response to alchemical studies and other ancient practices such as astrology, herbalism and the latest teachings on consciousness. Through a variety of mixed media including animation, textile works and sculpture, she aims to further exercise an analysis into the essence-connection of consciousnesses in an eternal process of discovery through various means and tools.

Kesic explores the human body as a memory vessel which collects traces of one’s reality, inner subjectivity and the imagination. Taking influence from the African fabric patterns of Brixton, memorised views from her Moscow flat, cosmic and the esoteric symbology of fashion trends, Kesic distances herself from the layers of memory and associations in order to get to their essence and convert them into their own elements, thus creating her own mythology. Her work speculates on how much our personal identity is influenced by the inner or the outer world. Fox’s work studies the mind's relationship with the human body, and the body as the unconscious mind. The latter follows research this year in neuroplasticity, epigenetics and yoga Nidra. Her mixed media works on fabrics explore what she calls the rare "primal view" of the body – as opposed to the second-hand reflections of it in mirrors or photographs. She also explores the womb, in its orblike planetary form, as our first ever home, as well as translating the grief of both humans and Earth through sound.

Forging the Self is a show about personhood, being a body vs having a body, the subtly tangled nest of cultural influences in which we grow and make ourselves homes. A wide-ranging and impactful look at individual and collective identities by a collection of distinct individuals, the show promises to be timely fuel for the thoughts and the senses.