Installation views of the exhibition of Who Remains
Recent Exhibition
AM Hoch
Who Remains
January 26 – March 9, 2024
Nelumbo Open Project
via Arienti 10, Bologna
www.nelumbo.it
An excerpt from curator Rico Franses’s curatorial essay for WHO REMAINS, which opens at Nelumbo Open Project on Friday, 26th of January, 6pm – 9pm:
‘To start with the word Dementia. It is composed of the prefix “de,“ which relates to removal or loss, and “ment” which is the Latin root from which the English words “mind” and “mentality” derive. Altogether, it means to be in a state in which Mind is absent or lacking. In line with this description, the disease is universally regarded as a progressive mental deterioration, as the sufferer loses more and more of their cerebral abilities. In this condition, they appear to have been deprived of a mind. To coin a term, they seem to have been Un-minded.
‘In the first instance, to those in contact with someone in this condition [dementia] , the term is horrendously accurate. The afflicted person has lost much of what, to us, is their being. All we see is loss, void, absence. And yet, these portraits show something entirely different. There is indeed, a “de,” a loss, but it is not one that ends in emptiness. Rather, the person is full. They inhabit a universe that always commands their full attention, their rapt concentration. It is a universe that, as we gather from the artworks, is by turns fascinating, terrifying, intriguing, and perhaps, at times, even amusing.’
©Rico Franses