Sophie Mak-Schram and collaborators: To Shift a Stone
What constitutes power, and who gets to hold it?
To Shift A Stone, is a two-part exhibition at Chapter and Amgueddfa Cymru by Sophie Mak-Schram and collaborators that explores how power is experienced, shared and challenged within these organisations and their publics.
Since 2023 Sophie has been working with staff at Chapter and Amgueddfa Cymru together with activists, community workers and artists to develop collaborative ‘tools’ that challenge and reimagine power structures.
At Chapter, focusing on our café – a place of commerce, labour and leisure – Sophie and collaborators have been reimagining the ways we might assemble, rest and connect in this public space. ‘Tools’ including folding screens, textiles and audio works soften the architecture and create spaces for slowness, privacy and listening. Artwork from the museum’s Schools Outreach Collection (1951–1990s), a collection of circulating objects and artworks that visited schools across Wales is displayed on the walls. The dissemination and mobility of these artworks bring into question how we might engage with art on our own terms outside cultural organisations and their curatorial frameworks.
Sophie’s billboard features artworks and objects from Amgueddfa Cymru and materials they have disregarded: glass found in the basement and a typeface designed based on an overlooked collection item, alongside images from Sophie’s own archives. Floating across the sky and the facade, these images are accompanied by the phrase ‘on hold’, with its repetition transforming it into the refrain ‘hold on’. Despite the continual promise of change in organisations towards more equitable and decolonial futures, creating and waiting for this change can feel like being endlessly on hold.
Over the past two years, Sophie’s work at both Chapter and Amgueddfa Cymru has disrupted structures and ways of working to rethink the distribution of power. This work has made it possible to envisage what change might look like and how it can manifest in our cultural institutions. Sophie’s work orientates us towards hope and ‘holding on’.
A public programme of events at Chapter and Amgueddfa Cymru will accompany To Shift A Stone. To receive updates about this programme, sign up to Chapter’s newsletter.