GERRIT RIETVELD ACADEMIE GRADUATION SHOW, FINE ART, 2020
Space size: 6.1 x 5.3m, sculpture 2 x 1m, painting 100 x140 cm
Exhibition date: 26–30 August 2020
Three white walls and one white curtain create a closed rectangular space with a narrow entrance at its left-side corner. The floor is cover in white, transparent crystal glasses. The first thing audience sees while entering the space is a 2-meter tall, white, half-human, half-animal sculpture facing the entrance, the bottom part of the sculpture is covered in white flour. There are two paintings hanging on the left side of the wall, one vertical and one horizontal. Composed sound of bodily organs sometimes hovers through the space, and a video of performance is projected onto the middle wall—performers in the video are inside an other worldly, all-white space whose floor is covered by flour, sharing similarities with the exhibition space.
This exhibition started from the live performance, Beings, shown below. Through the process of working on the project, various mediums and approaches became entwined and it gradually expanded into an immersive installation that contained video, sound, paintings, and sculpture.
BEINGS, 2020
Documentation of live performance and performance for video, live performance duration variable, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.
Beings is a study of approaching the concept of post-humanism as reclamation of alienation in relation to biopolitics. In the performance, the space is sometimes filled with composed sounds of the artist’s bodily organs, such as their heartbeat and throat vibrations, and sometimes the sound of the performers’ movements and their interaction with materials. The immersive performance sees eight performers on their own and in groups of two engage in repetitive sculptural movements and interactive performance, moving with the audience. The three performance languages draw inspiration from experimental theatre, dance, and performance art history; they explore concepts and emotions such as transgender and race issues, queer sexuality, and the relationship of power in both political and sexual contexts through radical tenderness of dominance and submission, as well as the limitation of the bodies, and different layers of communication. This work aims to create a togetherness that’s different from “a shallow opportunistic neo humanism ‘only one race, the human race’,” we experience in the international capitalist cities, but a togetherness that unties itself through the rebellion of humanity.
Quote from Rosi Braidotti, Posthumanism and Society Conference. New York, 9th May 2015.