Below the Underground. Ansuya Blom

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+++Ansuya Blom, Laurie Cluitmans, Eleonoor Jap Sam [eds.]+++

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| An intriguing look at the work by artist Ansuya Blom.

| Below the Underground, the title Blom gave to this publication, is characteristic. It is an invitation to dig deeper than the skin, than the surface. - Laurie Cluitmans

Over the past forty years, Ansuya Blom (Groningen, 1956) has built up a body of work in which she explores the boundaries of the inner world of experience. In drawings, collages, films and installations, she unravels these complex relationships of humanity with himself, the other and the outside world. Her drawings and films focus on the relation and friction between the marginalised individual and the external world. As a result of this friction, misunderstandings, misconceptions and confusions arise.

Text and words often play a role in Ansuya Blom’s work. The biographies of various individuals inform many of her drawings and films. In her films the world is seen through the protagonist’s eyes and heard through their inner voice. The potential of an implied narrative, of a development in time, plays an important part in her films. What fascinates her is both meaning which comes from syntax as well as meaning which has been lost or altered, arising from a disjointed sentence structure. Her drawings are based on texts, such as the letters of Ellen West, Native American Poetry and the writings of Søren Kierkegaard.

"Her works are not necessarily analyses of particular novels or pieces of writing, the texts form a point of departure for seeking out the friction between the self, the internal world of experience, and the systems and classifications of the external world. In the passage from internal to external, anxiety, miscommunication, misinterpretation and confusion can arise. The 'I' has to relate to systems that are assumed stable. To show this movement, her drawings, collages and films often start with one specific person: in her films she adopts a first person perspective. She invites the viewer to empathize with the individual before the largers systems of interpretation are brought into play." - Laurie Cluitmans

Solo exhibitions of Ansuya Blom’s work have been held at Camden Arts Centre in London; The Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Her work was part of the Aperto 90 La Biennale di Venezia. Her films have been screened at The International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin, IDFA and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her work is part of various private and public collections such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen Rotterdam, Tate Modern London.

Blom is a regular advisor at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and has been a guest advisor at various art institutions, amongst others the Slade School of Fine Art in London; ACC in South Korea; the Nola Hatterman Institute Surinam and Gudskul, Indonesia. She is also an associate member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research in London. In 2020 she was awarded the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art.

"Elusive is a word that comes to mind when I think about Blom's art. Not elusive because the communication is unclear, but elusive because both the works and the artist destabilize any word attributed to them. Blom consciously employs this as a strategy to show a different reality. Thinking in categories is insufficient, too, when it comes to her drawings, collages, paintings and films. Blom opposes this head on but with great subtlety." - Laurie Cluitmans

Ansuya Blom, Laurie Cluitmans, Eleonoor Jap Sam [eds.]

€35.00

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