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Itiswhatitis is an art collaboration between artists Sarah Strachan and Stepanka Facerova. With an ethos of increasing public access and engagement, Itiswhatitis Duo creates and curates opportunities in contemporary art.

EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS

"It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with you both and I completely appreciate your professional approach to both the install and take-down." Exhibitions and Events Technical Officer Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge

2022: Present tense: Future perfect - we organised, curated as well as included our own work in this exhibition that reflected on a shared history and the social identity of a group of emerging artists who all met at Cambridge School of Art. This exhibition of 13 artists provided a multi-sensorial snapshot of the ever-evolving sense of self, both individual artists and of the group.

It is now quite generally accepted that perception depends on knowledge of the world – so seeing the future depends on the memory of the past. Memory is also essential for our sense of identity or ‘the self’. The works included in this exhibition represented not only memories but real experiences - lives, loves, losses, desires, hopes, fears, anxieties, thoughts, and anticipations.

“Memory for past episodes provides a sense of personal identity…” Klein & Nichols, 2012.

The exhibition’s title not only played on the grammatical terms ‘present tense’ for the present, but it also pointed to the prevailing ‘tense’ situation we found ourselves amid a global pandemic. Future perfect is used to describe an event that is expected or planned to happen before a time of reference in the future.

Artists included:

Exhibition open: Wednesday 9^th March to Monday 27^th March 2022

Ruskin Gallery, East Road, Cambridge CB1 1PT.

2021: Art as a Living Theology - a solo online exhibition of PhD candidate Pavlína Kašparová. This exhibition was the result of four-year interdisciplinary inquiry, which was conducted between theology and fine art. Both disciplines play equal roles in Pavlína's research. The theological perspective provides the platform and boundaries within which the art is created, whereas art assists stretching these boundaries beyond their scholarly limits and offers a specific way of expressing reality and strategies for its understanding. The exhibition was also available at Itiswhatitis Duo's social media channels.

2021: Proximity by Proxy - an online exhibition hosted by Itiswhatitis Duo on their website and their social media channels. The exhibition featured works by a group of MA Fine Art students from the Cambridge School of Art. The exhibition was a showcase of the students' site-specific works created as part of their Acts and Discourses Module.

2021: Current - The Itiswhatitis duo presented Current – a carefully curated online show of work by current students and recent graduates associated with the University of Cambridge, Cambridge School of Art and Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts. Living and studying in our ‘current’ time is what links the artists and their works together, as well as an association with CAN (Cambridge Arts Network). Current provided a platform for 30 artists who responded to an open call across the city to coincide with the launch of the annual CAN conference – bringing together artists, curators, and cultural organisation from Cambridge and beyond.