Between Whispering Walls

    2020, immersive installation with             durational performance

Underneath the skin of things familiar, the elusive presence of the outside calls. Between whispering walls, its unsettling allure remains distant. Here the world is approached backwards, the inside derived through the outside, a disguise that is as revealing as it is misleading.

The work Between Whispering Walls features a disguise for my childhood bedroom made entirely from dark brown sheep wool. It is based on the memory of my bedroom in my parental home, which revealed its uncanniness as I realized that this space I thought I knew so well, I didn’t know at all. This discrepancy influenced the making of this immersive work. Sliding behind the romantic wallpaper into a parallel dimension you can find a world that is different from ours yet remains the same. Inside the room you are forced to rely on senses other than sight. As your eyes get used to the dark, you will notice at a certain point that one of the woollen shapes is actually alive. You are not alone, you are an intruder standing in someone else’s room. The slow almost meditative movements of the performer unbothered by visitors create an eerily calm mood.

Wool is an inherently transformative and mutable material. It is soft and inviting yet the depth and deep color tones of the brown wool reveal its more brooding nature. Through the process of washing, combing and felting wool onto everything inside my bedroom, the room transforms into an entity that is both alien and strange yet also eerily intimate and familiar. The room reveals itself as a seemingly breathing and live organism that poses as an intrusive but unattainable being. The room confronts you with the horror of the distance between us and the things we hold dear.  

Between Whispering Walls, immersive installation, 2020

Between Whispering Walls, immersive installation, 2020

Between Whispering Walls, immersive installation, 2020

Photography by Django van Ardenne

Between Whispering Walls, immersive installation, 2020

Photography by Django van Ardenne

Between Whispering Walls, immersive installation, 2020

Photography by Django van Ardenne

Between Whispering Walls, immersive installation, 2020

Between Whispering Walls, immersive installation, 2020