ART-PRESENTATION: Trade Markings
Frontier Imaginaries is a new multi-platform project that explores the condition of the frontier with the era of globalization. The exhibition “Trade Markings” at the Van Abbemuseum is inspired by the world-wide reach of Eindhoven and North Brabant’s trade relations over 600 years. It follows the centuries-old push and pull of trade marking and liquidity – the opacity of property and the transparency of exchange.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Van Abbemuseum Archive
The Van Abbemuseum presents the 5th Edition of Frontier Imaginaries entitled “Trade Markings: The Falcon, the Cigar, The Wafer”. The title was proposed by Denise Ferreira da Silva in response to the business histories of North Brabant (a province to the south-east of Holland). From this stand-point “globality” may be charted out as a series of relays in time and geography through three principle commodities; the falcon, the cigar, and the computer chip or “wafter”. The Falcon charts both an ecological bird migration-route connecting Northern Europe to Sub-Saharan Africa and a map of the early modern European falconry trade, which had at its epicentre the village of Valkenswaard. Secondly, the Cigar marks a world of industrialising production, the grids of the nation-state, and a commodity chain including tobacco leaves from Sumatra. Finally, the Wafer or computer-chip marks a transnational corporate system of ‘human capital’ and the regional marketing of a ‘brain-port’ along-side Rotterdam’s ‘sea-port’ and the airport of Schiphol/Amsterdam. In the exhibition viewers circulate anti-clockwise through a time-line that plots over 600 years of trade and social relations through an extended edition of Elizabeth A. Povinelli’s “Symphony of Liberalisms” (2015- ). This work notes dates of local and global significance onto a musical manuscript—inviting audiences to imagine history not as an unfolding sequence of events but as a mutating and unfolding sonic score. Step by step, however, the march of clock-time is interrupted and ruptured throughout the exhibition with unexpected points of allegiance and geographic parallels. Van Abbemuseum, has invited Karrabing Film Collective (a group of indigenous artists from Australia) to develop a new multi-screen work inspired by their research visit to the Valkerij en Sigarenmakerij Museum in Valkenswaard. The exhibition walso present together for the first time the 10-meter long canvas “Murriland!” (2015- ) by aboriginal artist Gordon Hookey alongside the cycle of 102 paintings that inspired it, Tshibumba Kanda Matulu’s “History of Zaire” (1973-74). Marcel van den Berg presents his series of collage canvasses “#andwealmostlost” (2013-16), also on presentation is Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s lenticular images “Footnotes to Squat / Anti-Squat” (2017) . The exhibition also features a new moving-image commission “Drawing Rights” by artist and researcher Rachel O’Reilly, in collaboration with PALACE (Valle Medina and Ben Reynolds), tracing colonial land and ocean law against the backdrop of the present-day gas industry in Australia. Participating Artists: Richard Bell, Marcel van den Berg, Blade, Collection George Al Ama, Alice Creischer, Bonita Ely, Gordon Hookey, Patricia Kaersenhout, Karrabing Film Collective, Tshibumba Kanda Matulu, Helmut Newton, Tom Nicholson, Rachel O’Reilly, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, The Otolith Group, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Ryan Presley, Rammellzee, Ho Rui An, Farida Sedoc, Erwin Thomasse, Dondi White and Sawangwongse Yawnghwe
Info: Curator: Vivian Ziherl in collaboration with Charles Esche and Annie Fletcher, The Van Abbemuseum, Bilderdijklaan 10, Eindhoven, Duration: 7/4-20/8/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, https://vanabbemuseum.nl
