Vasa Art Hall, Vasa City Museums
26.8.-29.10.2023
In Visibilis V dives into a world of contrasts and opposites, light and darkness. Part five of the exhibition series continues to tell stories about our relationship with the planet, technology, and each other. How we perceive influences our actions, how we encounter other forms of life, and how we choose to live our own lives. In Visibilis – invisibilis – is a play between what we see and what we do not see. Homo sapiens has never had this much wealth before. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, we are building different barriers and boundaries between each other and our habitats. We are fragmenting the ecosystems that support us, which are currently collapsing faster than ever before. Change, destruction, development, and rethinking always occur in border zones, between the light and the dark and the know and the unknown.
The works in the exhibition are based on lines and delve into themes like time, acceleration, society, and humanity in a global landscape. Many of the pieces have emerged from barcodes, which are a data-driven sterile language for computers, developed to streamline various capitalistic systems. Technology permeates our global societies. Binary codes in black and white lack something that exists in our languages and ways of being and thinking. What do we lose when we simplify systems to mere yes or no, right or wrong, ones and zeros? Our world is wonderful and vivid in all its possible shades; this is what makes it our beloved home.
In the exhibition, I explore these questions in relation to our visual perception. What meanings can be found in different colours, in darkness, in whiteness? What happens when shades blend and boundaries blur? How do we perceive the light we see? What shades can and do we want to distinguish? If you look closely enough at light, it will remain as an afterimage and echoes as the eye moves on. What do we truly have in front of our eyes, and what arises in our minds? Nothing is neutral and nothing is absolute. Everything exists in relation to something else; nothing occurs in a vacuum. This applies to frogs, clear-cuttings, and racism alike. The world is not black and white; rather, it is an infinitely complex network of countless relationships, times, and existences. Diversity improves, enriches, and strengthens our societies. This is how diversity functions; it creates prosperity and makes worlds resilient. It is needed to prevent new pandemics, inbreeding, and systemic collapse. The most beautiful colour eventually becomes dull and uninteresting if it’s all we see.
The exhibited works offer you the opportunity and space to recalibrate your perception. I hope that you pause for a moment, breathe in, breathe out, and allow your thoughts to rest on a light before moving forward.
The exhibition is supported by Svenska Kulturfonden
