It seems as if the users or owners of the rooms in this building have stopped their work and left. A desolate atmosphere, with visible remains of use; a cupboard along a wall, a window frame in decay, a japanese girl on a poster, a ladder, suitcases. The feeling of home is under pressure.
With relatively small interventions or adaptations two artists of the Dutch art initiative |elders, Liesbeth Bos and Liesbeth van Woerden, reflect on the desolate, displaced feeling in the building and its affected skin.
Liesbeth van Woerden examines skin injuries with the help of a fifty year old medical book on skin diseases. Liesbeth Bos heals the skin of the building in a photo-installation.
Liesbeth Bos makes an effort to ‘repair’ injuries with photography: in or near damaged parts of walls and windows she ‘implanted’ pieces of Dutch ‘skin’ in the walls, fences, windows of the Foundry.
Next to the photo a nameplate will mention the place of origin of the implantate and the date of the implantation.
The question arises will this photo installation bring back the feeling of home or just emphasis the feeling of desolation?
Liesbeth van Woerden emphasised the wounds and scars in the Foundry. She recently discovered a book on skin diseases in the legacy of her father. The resemblance between the infected human skin and the skin of old buildings fascinates her. Van Woerden adds injuries to existing injuries in the Foundry.
Doing so the artist wants to question discomfort; discomfort of the lack of a proper accommodation, a leaking shelter, an infected skin. If needed the artist will accentuate the injuries in the wall by drawing a square (in the size of the picture) around it.
‘elders’ is the Dutch word for ‘elsewhere’. Artist-run project space |elders is based in the Hague (the Netherlands) but breaks up and moves ‘elders/elsewhere’ at unexpected moments offering exhibitions, interventions and artist talks in temporarily unused buildings.
|elders presents contemporary artists on a regular basis in a program called “witte vertraging”: a slowing down of the time around the artwork in order to • meet the work and discuss it. • observe and investigate, without claiming a truth • encircle the artwork and let ourselves become enchanted. Intimacy and small scale are keywords in |elders’ practice as project space.
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