Butterflies don’t exist
Sara Blokland
April 29 – June 3, 2012
The exhibition shows the eponymous video installation. This work consists of eight short video chapters, displayed in a room covered with black and white images of nature on wallpaper. Next to this work Blokland shows the premiere of the The Wallpaper-paper a photo-installation that consists of a small newspaper.
Reviewed in
Wall Street Journal by Peter Plagens.
LMAKprojects is pleased to present Sara Blokland’s third solo exhibition with the gallery titled Butterflies don’t exist. The exhibition shows the eponymous video installation. This work consists of eight short video chapters, displayed in a room covered with black and white images of nature on wallpaper. Next to this work Blokland shows the premiere of the The Wallpaper-paper a photo-installation that consists of a small newspaper.
Sara Blokland, whose work predominately shows photography, reflects on the role of this medium in relation to social histories, the concept of ‘family’ and cultural heritage. In the video Butterflies don’t exist she constructs stories that are inspired by images and text from and by her family. Through this she reflects on topics such as (post) colonialism, migration and identity. In the eight short videos that can be viewed as chapters of an ongoing narrative she uses formal structures like voice-over, slideshows and strict video observations. The work reveals Blokland’s ideas and analyzes photography role as a gaze, an intruder and evidence.
The work The wallpaper-paper in the front of the gallery is a collection of photographs taken by Blokland’s family and herself in the Netherlands and in Suriname. Iwan Blokland (Father) took most of the images, almost exclusively of tree and branches. In The wallpaper-paper Blokland re-edited his and her own images into a ‘visual’ paper.
Sara Blokland is a visual artist, independent researcher and curator of photography. Her work has extensively been exhibited at institutes such as SMBA, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, the Netherlands Azad Gallery, Tehran, Iran; Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, the Netherlands; Kumbo Museum, Seoul Korea; Instituut Neerlandais, Paris, France and Foam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her work can be found in such public collections as the collection of ABN-AMRO, the Rabobank Collection, Gemeente Museum The Hague, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Het Domein, Sittard and Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem.
