Working closely on common themes to intertwine their visual poetry, Mulder and van Vuuren explore the incapturable essence of memory and experience through a connection to objects, images and the passing of time.
There is something unnerving about Mulder’s Neither here nor there (2014). Although beds in exhibition spaces are not new (think Tracy Emin), their appearance almost always results in an uncomfortable tension between the public sphere and private domestic or intimate space. The bed sags tiredly, bowed in the middle between its ageing rosewood bedheads, and the sheets are made of a rough raw calico. It appears stretched lengthways, and at close to 3 metres in length, one can’t help but wonder at what giant would need such an abnormally long resting place.
Equally unnerving alongside the bed is an old 3-legged table, I could never jump high enough (2014) that sits abnormally high from the ground, extended on iron legs. Like the bed, it is also an object from Mulder’s past family history in South Africa. The pieces could be read like a narration of perspective—not unlike a typical child’s drawing showing friends and family members with unusually long legs, a reminder of the perspective that we all once held of the world around us.
The unusually proportioned furniture has the inherent ability to act as a portal into which to view the rest of exhibition. Just as Salvador Dali’s melting clocks serve to place the viewer into a surreal space where time is non-linear, Mulders bed and table also act to set up a visual space of adjusted weightlessness where objects become ciphers for metaphysical experiences of memory, perception and time. This is helped by the decidedly uncluttered room, with warm sepia tones and textured surfaces also contributing to the feeling that the viewer is walking into a liminal space.
Shot from an intimate point of view peering through the shrouds and folds of an unknown fabric in an interior domestic setting, van Vuuren’s The Search (2014) is an exercise in searching for sublimity in the everyday. The moving images suggest an almost haunted, dreamlike space. It’s simultaneously evocative of the feeling of having ones feet caught up in the sheets during a restless night’s sleep and the unconscious eye of a somnambulist stumbling through the house. The video work holds a deliberately disorienting visual effect, and is grounded by an atmospheric soundtrack and saturating textures. The faltering view of the camera suggests a search for an ephemeral existence, something more to grasp within a seemingly ambiguous domestic environment.
Remnant 1980’s (2014) is a subtle work of small black and white photographs, set well apart along one wall. Old photographs would usually be kept for preservation amoungst other family heirlooms—however, reprinted onto disposable teabags, they question our desperate, sentimental attempts to hold onto the fragile memories we have. The images are from van Vuuren’s family history, repeatedly centralised around her mother. Unlike traditional family photographs, however, the photos are printed onto rooibos teabags, the ubiquitous African tea typically found at family gatherings and events. Once again, the idea of personal interaction with memory through an object comes into play, but even more so does the theme of searching through transient memory to find belonging, and in looking through the teabags one joins van Vuuren on her search for her mother.
Through their recreation and re-interpretation of objects such as family heirlooms and memories, Mulder and van Vuuren explore the bittersweet struggle of yearning for home while simultaneously letting go.
Written by Rainer Mark
Image credits: Cielle Jansen van Vuuren, The Search 2014, video still.