Palliative care for a dystopian world

April 5 till June 9 | MU HYBRID ART HOUSE, Eindhoven

Cocoons like bandaged shelters suspended in an undulating landscape with hidden small pools. The landscape is an in-between space, a bardo, of dust that becomes dust again, just as everything that lives becomes dust again. Or becomes liquid. 

Floating, bearing, lifting, carrying – intricate life caught or freed, retreating into a ‘carrier bag’. Seemingly dead on the outside, but bubbling, transforming, incubating inside. We move past it, mourning the soup of life, working our way through the compost heap, where we digest the old and make space for … 

‘Hospicing modernity’, Brazilian activist Vanessa Machado de Oliveira calls this guiding of the irreversible dying process of our modern toxic society. Inspired by her thinking and invited by MU, artist duo Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot ask visitors to come together in the organic and technological cracks of our disintegrating world in order to caringly help it to its end together. They are supported by Bolivian shaman Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti, who colours the landscape with polyphonic sound sculptures and regularly presides over mourning rituals in which the audience can participate.

Live performances by Ibelisse Guardia Ferragui every Sunday afternoon 

Together with Bolivian shaman/theater maker Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti, we create mourning rituals during the duration of the exhibition that visitors can participate in. Ibelisse also creates the polyphonic soundscape of this world. The practice of BVDS operates, lives, and moves as an infectious event. Rodrik Biersteker animates the video images, Lotte Goos the sculptures, Wikke van Houwelingen (Marloes&Wikke) the landscape, Julian Maiwald the light, but everything breathes together and creations move through different bodies and media before they land in the work.

BVDS returns to the visual arts space with WOMBTOMBS. Following Traveling without Moving in 2022, this is the duo’s second exhibition. The exhibition constitutes the first part of the diptych The New Body Project. The second part, Song of Songs, will be showcased in theaters in the fall of 2024.

WOMBTOMBS is made possible with the financial support of Fonds Podiumkunsten, Fonds 21, and Ammodo.