With Foreign Matters Karina Puuffin, Alexandra Subota, Lau Man Pan and Erik Aardema set out to create
an exhibition which draws upon the logic of the immune system and allergic processes, exploring
various aspects of allergy and its implications: othering, exclusion and contrasts between feeling out of
place and embeddedness.
Reflecting on underlying structures and shared interests allergy was chosen as a common ground: a way
to think about sensitivity, resistance, adaptation, and the complex relationships between bodies,
identities, materials, and social structures. Foreign matters are things that enter a system making it
respond as if under attack. Allergy comes after an exposure. Reaction is not caused by the substance
itself, but by the body’s own heightened defence. An overcorrection that produces inflammation, swelling,
rash, repetition of symptoms reveals a fragile boundary between recognition and resistance. How do we
or the system recognise something as foreign bodies? How does irritation take form? What does it mean
to persist when the system resists you? What does the system refer to?
For Foreign Matters the artists pursued an installation that reflects allergy onto the space. By means
of flame-like green paint banners engulfing the space emotions like inflammation, irritation and
transformative qualities like absorption and decay are mirrored. Within this installation the individual work
becomes subordinate to the whole, however they serve to convey the individual viewpoints through
means of the overlaying structure where transversal(intersecting) lines of development and work meet.
Alexandra Subota responds to misogyny and explores ideas of safety and defence. Her colourful
sculptures and painted elements on the walls play with contradicting elements between dreamy vibration,
fluffiness and pointed blades. Karina Puuffin and Lau Man Pan respond to issues of migration. Lau’s
cream archive explores the anxiety of being perceived as foreign. He collected empty ointment
containers bought while travelling through different countries. His search for cure is a metaphor, even if
the solution may be futile, the process of searching can be a form of redemption. Karina’s work
expresses her fear of forgetting after she fled her hometown and, while lingering in the Netherlands,
became increasingly foreign to the place. Her ceramics solidify childhood memories and experiences of
displacement reconnect herself to her roots. Erik Aardema focuses on how public space is built-up,
exploring material communication between unseen cracks and shiny surfaces. He focusses on how
irritation can take physical shape and how these elements can be appreciated and adapted.
Across sculpture, video and installation, the works trace processes of contact, absorption,
contamination and transformation. Materials react to one another much like bodies respond to what they
cannot yet identify: sometimes adapting, sometimes rejecting, often changing in the process. The
exhibition pivots around the point at which the foreign begins to shape the systems that define it. It invites
us to consider how difference is sensed, negotiated and ultimately woven into the structures that shape
our shared reality.