Making an art of dislocation
- Source: Global Times
- [13:25 June 28 2010]
- Comments
A movie still from I Could Live In Africa by Jacques de Koning. Photos: Courtesy of Dutch Culture Center
By Nick Muzyczka
Nether Land is the latest offering from the Expo-related Dutch Culture Center and consists of work produced by a number of internationally renowned artists.
As Act VIII of the traveling Morality series developed by the famous Rotterdam art organization Witte de With, it looks to engage "the contemporary challenges posed by an intense sharing and shifting of values," according to curators Nicolaus Schafhausen and Monika Szewczyk.
The clarity of this exhibition's concept is perhaps debatable. The accompanying text asks us the following question: "Exactly what part of the world is being evoked by this exhibition?"
The answer we are supposed to give is that there is no particular cultural theme dominating the room, that in some way the meshing and clashing of different concepts makes it "impossible for a cumulative portrait of a country or culture to emerge."
This is an interesting and relevant topic in today's interconnected world. Interplay and amalgamation between different cultures is an explosive phenomenon, growing exponentially as access to technologies and modes of expression expand across the globe.
There are many areas of the arts where the collision of diverse cultures is so profound that the resulting work doesn't seem to reflect the traditions that begat them at all.
Expressing such ideas in an exhibition is a difficult job, however. There is always the temptation to simply consider any collection of international artists as reflecting this highly complex social phenomenon.
Some pieces in the exhibition do manage to twist cultural themes together within single artworks.
Meschac Gaba, an acclaimed Beninese artist, brings a collection of headdresses or tresses created by skilled craftswomen from the town of Cotonou in Benin.
The braiding skills common to that area are used to weave tresses that resemble various buildings around the world, such as the Gherkin Building in London.
While not particularly wearable or exact (impossible given the braiding technique) they do seem to reflect the main theme of the exhibition.
Not all exhibits manage to pull this off to the same degree, though there are a number of interesting pieces to check out.
Sarah Morris' film Being 2008 is a collection of well-edited film clips that detail moments from the Beijing Olympics.
The artist combines surreal images from the opening ceremony with daily activities from a city totally transformed by a single event.
This is a sensitive and meditative 47-minute journey which somehow makes sense in the context of the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.
Possibly the most evocative piece in the show is from the Shanghai-based company MadeIn, which was set up in 2009 by Xu Zhen, one of the country's most famous conceptual artists.
