How do we deal with objects inherited from the past when the stories attached to them begin to shift, blur, and scar over time?
Opposite of an Island works against the idea of isolation. The exhibition traces entanglements of what is passed on and follows the trajectory of several ancient amphorae salvaged from a Mediterranean shipwreck by the artist’s grandfather in the 1960s. Once illicit underwater finds, later domestic decor, they now become a public starting point for renewed meaning.
Ancient amphorae float on inflated truck tubes. The same improvised tools were once used by the divers to lift the vessels from the sea. What enabled extraction, now holds suspension.
Documentary photographs of the original dives as grainy abstractions of what is remembered, what is altered and what remains unresolved.
A screenshot of an email to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Placed on the ceiling, directly beneath the museum’s departments of archaeology and restoration.
What begins as a personal inquiry becomes part of a public process, revealing how responsibility, authorship, and meaning shift as objects move from domestic space into public space.
Typographic paintings function as descriptions of specific states, moments, tensions, or experiences. Each work marks an “is-state”, a condition shaped by context, friction, and proximity.
The basement is enclosed by a curtain printed with a photograph of the original dives. During digitization, the image was pulled across a scanner, producing deliberate distortions. Like the altered voice in the accompanying audio piece, the archival material is not affirmed but unsettled.
An audio piece brings together two voices: the recorded voice of the artist’s late grandfather and an AI-generated offshoot of that same voice. Both recount the story of the amphorae. Their subtle differences point to how narratives change as they are passed on.
Opposite of an Island positions itself as a counterpoint to Michel Houellebecq’s science-fiction novel: The Possibility of an Island. Rather than imagining separation or withdrawal, the exhibition argues for connection: for memory, for entanglement, and for staying with complex histories.
