Scaffolding Scaffolding

From 8–19 June 2022, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht hosts Scaffolding Scaffolding, the graduation exhibition of the 2020−2022 MA Fine Art class of HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. The exhibition is organized under the curatorial guidance of Rachael Rakes. The opening takes place on Wednesday 8 June 2022, from 17.00–21.00 hrs.

Scaffolding Scaffolding features works by the graduates of the 2020−2022 MA Fine Art class of HKU University of the Arts Utrecht: Francisco Baquerizo Racines, Katayoon Barzegar, Stefan Cammeraat, Yuliia Elyas, Lin Chun Yao, Lo Yuen Ming, Giorgia Lo Faso, Harriet Rose Morley, and Kristel Rigaud.

It’s hard to imagine building for a future these days. It’s hard to legitimize the idea or the construct of a future in the first place. Progress is not appealing. Promises are not appealing. It’s clear where the promise of progress has led. Yet something must be constructed, even if foundations are shaky, materials scarce, and longevity is all but foreclosed. With Scaffolding Scaffolding, the graduating artists of the MA Fine Art class of HKU present works about the fragments of the past and present that are worth holding on to. They focus on erasures happening in the present, and those already created as past silences. They deal with contemporary movements of protest and retaliation, perpetual migration – whether from precarity, discrimination, or the literal threat to life. They attend to the constant building happening now, under the guise of a modernity past, of sites and non-sites, always in construction, of failed monuments, of deconstructions of language, home, and camaraderie.

Using scaffolding as a framework, this exhibition comes together to think about upholding the fragments of the precarious present. Depending on its location, scaffolding can be a sign of gentrification or one of preservation; it can index corruption, the locus of financial and political power, or care and rebuilding. Could it be useful to scaffold the scaffold? To support the things already put in place, to support something that is at risk of falling down, or aiming to be built, being restored, or being allowed to be in limbo? How to inhabit the idea of support itself?

Moving from these provocations, the artists propose ways of supporting through mapping, through zooming in on critical, punctual moments, through the act of construction, and representation. These provocations are infused with a sense of a present tense through humor, programming, and discourse. Alongside the exhibition, moments of public and private gatherings, of planned and spontaneous natures, will take place.