To See the Inability to See — a collective formed in 2019 at de Appels Archief — is known for its collective written texts and performative readings of a series of ephemeral triangular books. In 2022 and 2023, they developed a foldable multidirectional book/object called My Garden’s Boundaries Are the Horizon: A Porous Reader to Unguard the Garden . This publication has sculptural and performative qualities, emphasizing the relationship between bodies and books and provoking collectivity in writing, reading and thinking. It was developed in close collaboration with the designer, Elisabeth Klement, who participated in their collective process by designing the book in parallel with 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 extend the content into space and bodies, such as those of readers, visitors and artworks. This unfolding takes place on a flexible display that also supports a selection of works, interweaving the publication, the artworks and the artefacts into an interconnected constellation of physical and spatial experiences.
The collective writing of To See the Inability to See emerges from an attempt to open up spaces, question boundaries, and create new connections between objects and stories. In My Garden’s Boundaries Are the Horizon, the artists investigate the power structures associated with conventional forms of archiving and collecting. They see this archiving as a state of mind that we all experience on a daily basis: holding on to ‘the known’ and resisting change, ‘the unknown’, or not placing it. For this publication, the collective started from (fictional) stories around traditional Iranian buildings, such as the Persian garden called Fin Garden in Kashan, and in particular an octagonal vestibule called the hashti . The women-led uprising in Iran in 2022 drove the collective to exchange letters that proved to be highly influential on the content of the book.
The exhibition comprises several chapters, displayed in various places in de Appel. One consists of artworks by the individual members of the collective that were developed in parallel with the writing process. A second domain comprises historical objects from personal collections that relate to the content of the publication. A third domain consists of works by other artists that are referred to in the book. A fourth direction draws connections between the content of My Garden’s Boundaries Are the Horizon and the Appels Archive, because it was from this archive that the collective first began to write about visibility and invisibility, inclusion and exclusion in archival practices. The title is a quote from Derek Jarman, referring to his fenceless garden in Dungeness.
The exhibition features work by Arefeh Riahi, Martín La Roche Contreras, Maartje Fliervoet, Kader Attia, Kasra Jalilipour and Seba Calfuqueo, as well as a selection of historical objects.
During the exhibition there will be a public program with film and video screenings by Derek Jarman, Kasra Jalilipour, Marcela Moraga and more, and performative talks with the dash (-) collective, Constanza Mendoza, Giles Bailey, Lara Khaldi and Francisca Khamis Giacoman. The screenings are organized in collaboration with Kriterion.
Press release from de Appel
Image: Installation view of My Garden’s Boundaries Are the Horizon, de Appel. 2024. Image courtesy of de Appel, Amsterdam
