To say that we are making progress in our being human: no. That message also spreads outside the news. For example in the Eindhoven of Abbe Museum, where artist Iman-Abasi Okon (London 1981) takes the visitor into account in her approach to progress thinking. In ten halls she discusses ideas about dealing with the other, where you as a visitor are led past a kind of running circuit. The inputs of the halls have blue arches that are also used in long -distance competitions, there are rolled pieces of athletics track, sensors that respond to the movement of visitors, timers, glucose meters and walls full of markers with which routes are marked along the road for walkers or runners.
That sounds abstract and complicated, and it is. The title of the exhibition – Incorporeal Hereditament Like Love [can] Set (s) you free, accordance to Kelly, Case, Dru Hill, Kandice, Lovher, Montel and Playa with 50 – 60g or –D,) E, L, A, Y, E, D1; -) N, S, E, T2; -;[heart]; M,) u, s, c, l, e3;[heart]- —s,) o, r, e, n, e, s, s4; – does not really offer a handle. When you look at the certificates that are spread over the floors, you hope to get some idea what the whole is about. But these labland labland from Okon’s dried stew of oxtail, which bypassed food safety rules give little support. In other piles there are non-filled forms of immigration and naturalization service about the stay of a family member, or papers for help with health care or housing. And as if that is not enough, there are works on the wall with the announcement ‘Call Him’, there is a video about the history of palm trees in the United States, while loudspeakers sound a run.
Anyone who also considered that room 1 mirrors room 10, room 2 with room 9, room 3 with 8, et cetera will be inclined to drop out. There are sometimes limits of abstraction, and those who have a story to tell usually do so with plot lines because otherwise your listeners also drop out. In short Incorporeal Hereditament … Is typically such a solo exhibition where the idea must sound great on paper, but the effect cannot be followed and you usually ignore it.
Reduced to numbers
Yet the exhibition kept me busy for several days. It was as if you had ended up in a sports competition of which you did not fully understand the rules, but where it was about one Survival of the Fittest of which you automatically became a participant through the clocks in different rooms. Everything must be improved, the time, the food, the course and – of course – your own body. Bags with powder and coconut milk that needs to replace food are undoubtedly better than a ‘rule -entering’ stew of oxtail. “We are all individuals”, The crowd shouted in the movie The Life of Brianto emphasize little individualistic thinking. The individual who takes powders to get the sports body of any other, or that the immigration service awaits on the basis of well -completed forms: the individual appears to be not very unique, is reduced to numbers, times, touched boxes.
I want to make art and experience art into a kind of slow diet
Although the title of the exhibition, the first part of it, is based on a recent version of ‘Love Sets You Free’ by the American R&B singer Kelly Price, who brings an ode to love in that song, you don’t get that idea about love at the exhibition. This is not only due to the accompanying texts about colonialism, and it repeatedly repeated: ‘With Peace, Without Peace’ on a wall, but also because you are suddenly stopped almost halfway (in rooms 4 and 7) by low -hanging ceiling plates, while a large speaker fully pumped the space with organ sounds. You can’t get through, but possibly underneath. And so you crawl through a world, waiting for results. But results of what actually?
“I want to make art and experience art into a kind of slow diet. We have a culture in which things are delivered immediately, but when you take it quieter, other perspectives come up. There are other sounds to sound,” said IMA-ABASI Okon about her work (the exhibitions she already worked out in different variations, including Tate Britain) in one interview With the artificial leaf Ocula Magazine. You see that idea in several ways, whereby the repetition in halls in particular shows that although there is a goal, but not a real change, let alone improvement.