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Writer's pictureNabuurs&VanDoorn

Nabuurs&VanDoorn at Happy Hospitality, SECONDroom Antwerp


Visitors in the gallery space during the opening
SECONDroom during the opening of Happy Hospitality, August 2024

SECONDroom is an artist-run off-space which organizes one day exhibitions. Happy Hospitality was an exhibition given shape by the instalment of artworks and turned exhibition making itself into performance. We explore the concept of the "in-between", and especially in our Zwischenland-schaften series delve into these overlooked, yet essential spaces—whether between urban and rural, public and private, or the visible and hidden.

The transient, experimental format of "Happy Hospitality" offers the perfect platform to further this exploration, transforming these fleeting, liminal spaces into something tangible. Here, we bring these themes into focus in a setting where the boundaries between art, space, and performance blur together seamlessly.

nine artworks installed to the wall inside the white gallery space
Detail of the exhibition Happy Hospitality at SECONDRoom

After we enter the gallery space Christophe Flore, initiator behind the happening, welcomes us and shares instructions.

Scratched out text with on top a garbage bag symbol
Nabuurs&VanDoorn, Self-censorship in Cancel-culture, marker and ballpoint on latex on paper, 2024

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01-> Pick a frame from the already installed frames.

02-> Frame the work you have taken along

03-> Re-install the work you framed

04-> Register your participation (Name/ Title/ Description)

05-> Join for drinks at the bar and support the initiative

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We made a work especially for this occasion.



Chris Dercon, a Belgian art historian, curator, and museum director wrote in Brussels-based contemporary art magazine Glean that the most common feature between artists living today is self-censorship.  For this work, we copied and hand-scratched a real estate agent's brochure and combined it with the sign of a trash bag that we, where we live, see every time when we take out the trash. It is a work on paper on which we first applied latex before starting to draw on top of it. This effects in stretched and stressed lines. In our work we have always used self-censorship as a gesture to express our precarious position.

 

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