THIS RARE EARTH - STORIES FROM BELOW

On February 13, 2018 STUK will be taken over by Artefact, an exhibition and festival on the crossroads of contemporary visual arts, current events and societal challenges. Artefact presents contemporary art practices that engage with complex topics, ‘wicked problems’, urgent themes that unite or divide us, in a a poetic, critical and experiential way.

This Rare Earth — Stories from Below directs our gaze down to our feet, to the geological materials that lie beneath the earth’s surface. The exhibition and festival gives voice to the stories told by these geological materials, conflict minerals and metals, and rare earth elements. The artworks involved focus on the political, economic and ecological implications of their circulation; from mining, processing, and trading, to use, and recycling. And they reconnect the elements of earth with their cosmic origins: ‘as above, so below’.

Specific attention goes out to artist practices going beyond critical reporting, towards an embedded, involved way of relating to the geological turn. They shed light on otherwise invisible themes, create new narratives, or offer alternative concepts that can help us in creating a different understanding of or perspective on the fundamental connection between man and mineral, and between body, earth and cosmos.

With works by Otobong Nkanga (NG), Ilana Halperin (US), Julian Charrière (CH), Justin Bennett (UK), Cecilia Jonsson (SE), Prabhakar Pachpute (IN) & Rupali Patil (IN), Maarten Vanden Eynde (BE), Unknown Fields (AU/UK), Füsun Türetken (TR), Lise Autogena (DK) & Joshua Portway (UK), Susanne Kriemann (DE), Lara Almarcegui (ES), Sissel Marie Tonn (DK), Milo Rau (CH), Ursula Biemann (CH) & Mo Diener (CH), Egill Sæbjörnsson (IS), Kirstie van Noort (NL) & Xandra van der Eijk (NL)


Curators
Karen Verschooren & Ils Huygens (Z33)


Artefact is an initiative of the Province Vlaams-Brabant i.c.w. Stad Leuven, and is supported by KU Leuven in the context of the policy guideline ‘art and science’.