Stinky Mirrors

Comprised of ritual ceramics with water, rotting wood trunks, lights, scents and sounds, the installation Stinky Mirrors is part of an ongoing exploration of ways of relating to our environment. In today’s world, Western cultural frameworks determine what is a “plague” and what is “desirable”, what is a wasteland and what is ideal farmland, what belongs and what does not. Stinky Mirrors places so-called undesired substances like stinky waters at the centre, creating a kind of mirror of the time.

Engraved and sculpted on the surface of the ceramics are slithering depictions of hybrid insect-amphibian creatures, fragments of ancient human culture, and anthropogenic symbology of current-day companies and tech-conglomerates. With this, the work seeks to challenge colonial and capitalist frameworks that render the current anthropogenic demise as a universal human enterprise, forfeiting how historical, material and colonial development lay at the source of the breakdown we are in.

The room-scale installation full of waterworks offers a calming space to spend time wondering and ground in the senses. The madman-laboratory aesthetics questions our relationships with the more-than-human and juxtaposes the eternal world of microscopic life with our larger-than-life human endeavour.

Stinky Mirrors is supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Stichting Stokroos (Seed Grant), PPO Werktuig en EKWC Grant (OCW, Province of Noord-Brabant and Oisterwijk Municipality)