Home: An Unfinished Project

“If the body is a home, who is our neighborhood?” This question was the starting point to develop Home: An Unfinished Project, a performance-based exhibition by the participants of this year’s edition of our program Collective Learning in Practice (CLIP). Home: An Unfinished Project is a motion reimagining gridded neighborhoods into dynamic rhizomes; reinventing familiar structures; creating different colored roots that support community development; encountering tensions, ideas of freedom, and the many different paces of others; of touching rough edges; of making connections.

Exhibition
A “live” exhibition, Home: An Unfinished Project opens to the public on Friday, April 8, 7pm, with new movements performed and physical elements added, removed, or transformed over two weeks. The performance is on view for two consecutive weeks on Fridays from 7 to 8pm, and on Saturdays from 3 to 4pm. During non-performance days and hours the set design, music, and videos documenting the conceptualization are on view and open to the public. Staged in the second-floor galleries of Kunstinstituut Melly, the exhibition follows a choreographic score of movements and play. The project aims to foster reconnection; of being still while moving; as well as to express an array of feelings, from being pushed in-between things; of being pulled away from things; and of being eager to find air, roots, and balance. Read the curatorial statement on Kunstinstituut Melly’s website.

Collective Learning in Practice
Home: An Unfinished Project is a project of the fourth annual edition of CLIP, a six-month work/study program for youth and emerging professionals in Rotterdam. CLIP aims to increase the voices of decision-makers within the institution in order to bring different perspectives that are embedded in the talent development of the participants. Since 2018, the participants of this program have been crucial in Kunstinstituut Melly’s transformation, from inspiring its name change to developing new programming activities. Ten participants are enrolled in this year’s edition of CLIP: Alma Zijderveldt, Bianca Casaburi, Elisa De La Serna Gallego, Je-Anne Dirksz, Lara Silva Santos, Lola den Dunnen, Repelsteeltje, Seré, Simon Mensger, and Yoshi So.

These ten CLIP participants organize Home: An Unfinished Project under the guidance of Amsterdam-based artist and choreographer Karina Villafan and Kunstinstituut Melly’s curator of collective learning, Jessy Koeiman. Besides conceptualizing and performing the exhibition’s score, they have also commissioned the exhibition’s set design to Ludmila Rodrigues, sound/music to Hyunji Jung, and costumes to Eduardo Leon from Avoidstreet. Working closely with them as the producer of this live exhibition is Rotterdam artist Pilar Mata Dupont, who oversees other productions at Kunstinstituut Melly. Emilia Tapprest from nvisible will create the CLIP documentary for 2022.

A press-pack with biographies for all participants can be downloaded here. For press requests or for further information, please contact Jeroen Lavèn via press [at] kunstinstituutmelly.nl.

About
Kunstinstituut Melly is the new name of the institution formerly known as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Conceived as an art house in Rotterdam, our mission is to present and discuss the work created by visual artists from here and afar.

Kunstinstituut Melly is supported by the city of Rotterdam and the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science. Home: An Unfinished Project is supported by Stichting Verzameling van Wijngaarden-Boot. Our partner Stichting Droom en Daad supports our public activities. We thank them for that!