Gravity of Emptiness

For the exhibition ‚Talking & … other Banana Skins‘ at Urban Nation Museum, Berlin, Various & Gould were comissioned to develop an installation within the chapter ‚Hybrid Histories‘. 

‚Gravity of Emptiness‘ questions how historical events reverberate in our global world. There is often a tension between the official culture of remembrance and individual suffering. The suspended installation addresses the power of history in a post-colonial society. What remains when a society has been deprived of its cultural goods or foreign traditions of knowledge have been imposed?

The empty plinth and the play with a distorted perspective question the Western canon of knowledge. The central rotating element is symbolic of this power and the question surrounding the emptiness or meaning of culture. Whilst the ghost-like structure poses what is concealed or revealed in alteration. Sometimes emptiness, sometimes heaviness, the ‚stone of offence‘ that emerges can be understood as both a form-giving and a destructive element, depending on how it is used.

A folded fragment of a horse, emblematic of a heroic equestrian statue, hangs from the ceiling – like a fallen mount – creating tension between the empty plinth and the shrouded space. The teardrop eyes are presented sometimes open, sometimes closed. Seeing and not seeing in alternation, as in the course of history. And around it is the question: Who determines what is important?