The More You Think, The More You Know, The More It Happens is an exhibition showcasing artists’ approaches towards wellness, (self-)soothing and care, and their commodification. It departs from the shared struggle to find healing tactics in the conditions of being constantly expected to do so, often giving the opposite result of negative feedback loops (common examples include thinking about not thinking or insomnia induced by the necessity to fall asleep). The artworks in this exhibition explore the tension between the desire to heal or resolve oneself and the resistance against doing so. Such friction may stem from our natural tendency to question imposed ideas as a form of self-preservation or act as an escape from profit-driven systems that exploit our positive and proactive attitudes. In a world where ‘not buying’ seems like the most accessible form of agency, refusal to subscribe to the concept of long-lasting satisfaction presents itself as an empowering solution.
Until the point where it’s not – because everybody wants to feel good, moreover everybody deserves to feel good, and everybody should like everybody. Presented works open an in-between area, where the need for care is welcomed, transcending the concept of permanent comfort and playing with its fetishisation.
About the artists
**Nadine Ghandour **(UAE) is an artist whose practice alternates between drawing , writing and sculpture. Nadine’s work presents stories of unstable architecture, shapeshifting surroundings and buildings that trap its inhabitants. She is interested in ways we experience architecture within cities that develop at hyper speeds, and how this affects the psyche of its residents. She creates fictional characters, imagines spaces with bizarre lighting conditions, and immerses herself in absurd realities.
Adjacent to her practice, she works in libraries and archives. She was Library and Research Manager at Jameel Library in Dubai, and Archive Chef at PrintRoom Rotterdam.
The multimedia artist **Manon Malan **was born in Zurich where she began her practice of creative resistance. Interested in imperfection, vandalism, visual identity and social structures she worked on interactive installations and actions in public spaces. She was part of the collective Secret Gäng, squatted at the VIVA VAGINA HAUS and was a regular at the Pela Mode cultural space.
After a couture tailoring apprenticeship Manon moved to London in 2013, to gain a BA in print design at Central Saint Martin. Her final showcase Feng Pfui Transport won the Manon Sally Woodward Award, was selected for Central Saint Martins BA press Show and got the Studio Prize 93 Baker Street.
In 2020 Manon relocated to the Netherlands to complete an art residency at the BAD Institut Rotterdam. Here she returned to doing art as part of community with the opening of Art Space BUSINESS, a collective of ateliers in Rotterdam. She continues to create work that questions society, examines waste in the fashion and design industry and offers alternate ways of reflection.
**Agata Sznurkowska ** was born in Gdańsk, Poland. A bad sleeper, yet a good dreamer— she is interested in facts, fun and a combination of these. These identities become crystalised in her installations, objects, sounds and moving image works.
Through her practice, Agata aims to navigate the absurdities of globalized, late capitalist reality, exploring the contrast between internalized suspicion towards positivity and the urge for hope and resolution. Employing a combination of analog and digital image making methods, she seeks to relate to the outside world departing from the innate desire for warmth while maintaining critical distance.
**Su Yang ** (KR) de- and reconstructs spaces in which we dwell to suggest alternative modes of sensing and being. Drawn from domestic environments and activities, she recreates and reenacts through woodcarving or performative actions and transforms a given material into the shape of another, distancing them from their usual logics and our automatic associations. Her processes move away from the representational, to a more phenomenological apprehension of time and spaces we inhabit. The liminal dimensions she creates often contain wooden objects, sound, text and sensory stimuli. With an attempt to slip out from the normatives and binaries, she sets different elements in spaces into syncopated rhythms where various elements continuously intersect, refract and couple.
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Timetable
11 July Opening – 18:00 – 22:00 | performance by Nadine Ghandour 19:00 and 20:00
Other days to visit the exhibition:
12-14 July & 19-20 July 15:00 – 19:00
20 July 22:00 – morning | CLOSING EVENT: Sleepover for Insomniacs – an overnight stay at the gallery filled with sleep inducing program (including herbal infusion binge drinking, collective boring reading or a slow cinema drawing session). You are invited to welcome your neurosis to shared bedtime and unapologetically be unable to fall asleep together! //More info to follow//