To See the Inability to See: My Garden’s Boundaries Are the Horizon

To See the Inability to See—a collective that formed at de Appel’s Archive in 2019 by Maartje Fliervoet, Martín La Roche Contreras and Arefeh Riahi—is known for its collectively written texts and their performative readings of a series of temporarily made triangular books. In 2022 and 2023 the collective developed a foldable multidirectional book-object called My Garden’s Boundaries Are the Horizon: A Porous Reader to Unguard the Garden. The publication has sculptural and performative qualities, stressing the relationship between bodies and books; provoking collectivity in writing, reading and thinking. It was developed in close conversation with its designer, Elisabeth Klement, who joined the collective process by designing the book parallel to the development of its content. The book-object has now unfolded into the exhibition My Garden’s Boundaries Are the Horizon—a repertoire of objects, gestures and events that expands its content into the space and in relation to other bodies, such as those of readers, visitors and artworks. This unfolding takes place on a flexible sculpture display that also holds a selection of works, weaving the publication, the artworks and the artefacts into an inter-related constellation of physical and spatial experiences.

To See the Inability to See’s collective writing rises from an effort to open up spaces, question borders and establish new connections between objects and stories. In My Garden’s Boundaries Are the Horizon the artists look into power structures related to conventional forms of archiving and collecting. They see this archiving as a state of mind that we all experience on a daily basis: clinging to ‘the known’, resisting change, ‘the unknown’, or the uncategorizable. For this publication the collective drew on (fictional) stories surrounding certain traditional Iranian buildings, such as the Persian garden called Fin Garden in the city of Kashan, and in particular an octagonal vestibule called the hashti. The women-led uprising in Iran in 2022 triggered secret correspondences between the members of the collective, which turned out to have a major influence on the content of the book.

The exhibition encompasses different realms. One consists of artworks by the individual members of the collective developed alongside and parallel to the process of writing. A second realm includes historical objects from personal collections that are related to the content of the publication. A third realm comprises other artists’ works referenced in, or connected to the book. A fourth direction draws connections between the content of My Garden’s Boundaries Are the Horizon and de Appel Archive, as it is from this archive that To See the Inability to See first started writing on visibility and invisibility, inclusion and exclusion in archiving practices. The title is a direct quote from Derek Jarman, referring to his fenceless garden in Dungeness.

Featured in the show are works by Arefeh Riahi, Martín La Roche Contreras, Maartje Fliervoet, Kader Attia, Kasra Jalilipour and Seba Calfuqueo, as well as a selection of historical objects. Arefeh Riahi’s project The House of Secrets in Geometric Structures focuses on the complex power dynamic between public and private space, and more specifically the tension between genders within these spaces. In terms of its content, this work has formed one of the starting points for the collective’s publication. The Multi-fold-object, which is part of a body of work that Arefeh has been developing since 2014, also serves as a foundation for this exhibition. Departing from the form of a cube, the works in this series vary in template, scale and presentation, and are often used as research tools to be unfolded in response to specific sites and contexts. To resist is to remain invisible by Kader Attia is a piece from 2011 created during the Arab Spring, with which it contrasts: at the time, the act of resistance was to go into the streets, as millions did, and so to be visible. But insurrection is a point of departure, and true resistance begins in everyday life. For this exhibition, the piece can be seen from the outside-in, on de Appel’s facade. For My Garden’s Boundaries are the Horizon, Martín La Roche Contreras wrote about gardens and queer space. Martín’s archive-work Magic Box (after David Wojnarowicz) speculates on the stories contained within a collection of objects found in a box under David Wojnarowicz’s bed after his passing from AIDS complications in 1992.The installation Legitimate Pavilion by Martín was made with recycled paper from his 10-year archive of ephemera collected from other artists’ exhibitions, and providing an intimate reading room for Arefeh’s work Unspeakable Secrets: a letter-essay. The video-essay Gut Feelings: Fragments of Truth by Kasra Jalilipour asks how fragments of historical truth might help us to reimagine queerness in pre-westernized Iran. Spilleages by Maartje Fliervoet, is a series of three woven textiles, based upon water photogrammes in which the artist focuses on how she tries to ‘control’ her visual language, and on the human desire for control in general. Maartje also developed Site Specific Slurry, a textile print placed on one of de Appel’s curtains, connecting the copper roof of the building to toxic waters from copper mine tailing ponds. The video work Kowkülen (Liquid Being) by Seba Calfuqueo is composed of an audiovisual recording and the author’s writing; the work goes through a physical, personal and poetic journey regarding water, wetlands, lakes, oceans, rivers and springs.

During the exhibition there will be a public programme with film and video screenings by Derek Jarman, Kasra Jalilipour, Marcela Moraga and more, and performative readings with dash(-)collective, Constanza Mendoza, Giles Bailey, Lara Khaldi and Francisca Khamis Giacoman.