in pain

Most illnesses are not visible from the outside. Whether or not someone is in pain is hard to see. Patients are forced to resort to language. I wrote a text about the need to give a name to your pain and how to do this your way. Furthermore, I photographed bodies of people who are in pain. The negatives I placed in slide projectors. The projected image is therefore reversed; what is dark, becomes light, the body is turned inside out. The projection is programmed in such a way that bodies occasionally overlap and merge for an instant, before being pulled apart again. The texts were joined by small drawings and exhibited on the walls next to the dark space of the projection. Together, the projection and the texts shape a many-layered work about pain, its language and its (in)visiblity.

(full screen highly recommended)

slide projection, 35 mm black-and-white negatives
duration: 7 minutes (loop)
words, drawings, paper
2020

In pain is a work in two parts: a series of texts with drawings on paper, and a slide projection with black and white negatives. Together, they shape a work about pain, its language and its (in)visiblity.  

Many thanks to Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst & De Kunsthal for their support of the development of this project.