Ola Vasiljeva: En Rachâchant
The Oceans Academy of Arts: Universitywith Özlem Altin, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Ola Vasiljeva and Marianne Vierø
September 13–December 13, 2015
Opening: September 12, 5–7pm
Vleeshal
Zusterstraat 7
4331 KG, Middelburg
The Netherlands
From September 13 until December 13, Vleeshal is presenting a solo exhibition by Ola Vasiljeva (b. 1981, Latvia) at Vleeshal Markt, along with a group exhibition at Vleeshal Zusterstraat 7 that runs parallel to and in dialogue with her solo show.
Ola Vasiljeva: En Rachâchant
Curated by Roos Gortzak
This exhibition borrows its title from the short film En Rachâchant by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, based on the children’s story Ah! Ernesto by Marguerite Duras. It takes a humorous look at de-hierarchising the educational process through the character of Ernesto, who insistently refuses to go to school because it teaches things he does not know.
In En Rachâchant, Vasiljeva strategically approaches negation and the refusal to learn. In a time when market logic dominates all fields of teaching and dictates that knowledge must be rentable in economic terms, this show mounts a playful assault on this ideology.
The exhibition takes the form of an anti-pedagogical stage, one populated by mixed-media works, sculptures and drawings that manipulate motifs related to the subject of disobedience as a course of learning.
As part of the exhibition, Vasiljeva has developed two course programmes: “The Course in Lying” and “The Course in Doubt,” which will be incorporated within Vleeshal’s education programme during the exhibition.
The Oceans Academy of Arts, University
The group exhibition University brings together works by the following members of the Oceans Academy of Arts: Özlem Altin, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Ola Vasiljeva and Marianne Vierø.
University plays with the idea of experimental pedagogical systems, which formed a critique of society’s major ideological institutions. Such schools experimented with self-organised education and were founded in response to the intellectual bankruptcy and spiritual emptiness of the approved educational establishment. They proposed courses that opposed conservative educational programmes and idealised the unrestricted development of thought.
The Oceans Academy of Arts (OAOA) was founded in 2008 by Ola Vasiljeva as a similar experimental platform under the umbrella of contemporary art. This semi-fictional institution presents itself as real, yet plays with its own illusive image and approaches the exhibition space, the work of art, and the role of the artist as reflections of the same body.
Just as the Anti-University rejected so-called “conscious practices,” OAOA sees the idea of “un-learning” in relation to the critique of reason and sense in general. Here nonsense, fragmentation and forgetfulness triumph over reason, form, function and chronology.
Ola Vasiljeva
Ola Vasiljeva lives and works in Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions include The Limp of A Letter, BOZAR, Brussels, 2015; University, Galerie Antoine Levi, Paris, 2015; Jargot, Art in General, New York, 2014; The Limp of A Letter, Prix de Rome, De Appel, Amsterdam, 2013; and Cinq à sept, kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, 2013. Her work has also been included in significant group shows, among them: XII Baltic Triennial, CAC, Vilnius, 2015; Last Seen Entering the Biltmore, South London Gallery, London, 2014; What Were You Expecting, Mr. Milquetoast, a Plot?, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, 2014; and Fusiform Gyrus, Lisson Gallery, London, 2013.
Funded by Mondriaan Fund and City of Middelburg
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