Enframing Home

Overview

The long-term project, YOVO! YOVO!’s first collective work, draws on the theorist Timothy Mitchell’s concept of 'enframing', a term to describe how colonisers hierarchically restructure the colonised world in order to better understand and contain it. Initiated as part of the exhibition Take, Take, Take and . . . ? at the Benin Biennale in 2012, the project takes place in different countries on multiple continents, in a variation on the children’s game Chinese Whispers (also known as Telephone).

In this game, one person whispers a message to another, which is passed along one by one to each participant; as the message is transmitted, misunderstandings inevitably occur, and the message is altered slightly as it passes from person to person.

The starting point of the project is Germany, where the artists live. Five people were asked to describe a set of model homes in Germany, an actual place that also represents an idealised way of living. Their descriptions were translated into French and given to sign painters in Benin, who created images of the houses based on their interpretation of the descriptions, filling in the gaps with their imaginations.

For Sharjah Biennial 11, five people in Benin were asked to describe the sign painters’ works. These texts were then translated into English and sent to Sharjah, where graphic designers sought to turn these descriptions anew into actual depictions of homes. These new interpretations are exhibited alongside the paintings from Benin. The installation is completed by three videos that create a fictional, multilingual dialogue between people whom the artists encountered in Germany, Benin and Sharjah, who 'meet' in the space of the exhibition.


2013

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 11

Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation