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By the position of your heart IT WILL BE KNOWN WHERE THE MIDDLE PLACE IS

Mariana Castillo Deball

Solo exhibition

18 December 2021 – 28 February 2022
Vleeshal (Map)

By the position of your heart IT WILL BE KNOWN WHERE THE MIDDLE PLACE IS | Mariana  Castillo Deball

On december 18 the exhibition By the position of your heart IT WILL BE KNOWN WHERE THE MIDDLE PLACE IS with Mariana Castillo Deball’s suspended ceramic installations opened. As with most of her practice, the piece acknowledges and explores how stories are performed and retained in museums, while making visible practitioners and makers whose histories have long been obscured.

The ceramic pieces, particularly those made of porcelain and painted with an engobe slip, resemble ancient pottery vessels that have perforations at their base or 'kill holes'. This deliberate removal of a receptacle’s function as a container is found to be common practice used for traditional burial rites in the American Southwestern region. Deball further manipulates these forms to create five imagined pieces connected by a rope, while also incorporating her 1998 sculptural investigation of the Klein bottle, a mathematical object that has no inside or outside. This formalistic exploration of ceramics is paired with Deball’s extensive research and mediation in science, archaeology, and the visual arts, specifically on how these disciplines describe the world. Her work also highlights collaborations, and the knowledge exchanges that occur by experimenting with its modes of (re)production. The work was installed in the historic B&W-room of Middelburg's former Town Hall.

The exhibition of Mariana Castillo Deball’s was the last of three exhibitions part of a collaboration with the Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund.

The Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund was established in 2020 and is part of the Hartwig Art Foundation. Every year, the fund supports a group of artists in creating new and ambitious work. The works of art are eventually purchased by the Hartwig Art Foundation and donated to the Netherlands Collection. For 2021-2022, the Hartwig Art Foundation collaborates with five art spaces in the Netherlands to present work by the 15 artists that have been supported with a grant in 2020: Kunstinstituut Melly (Rotterdam), Stroom (Den Haag), Oude Kerk (Amsterdam), Casco Art Institute (Utrecht) and Vleeshal in Middelburg.

As part of a collaboration with the Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund, Vleeshal showed new works of three artists at various surprising satellite locations in the city of Middelburg.

Series

In 2015 Vleeshal kicked of its Nomadic Program, as an extension of its existing exhibition program in Middelburg. In its Nomadic Program Vleeshal goes on tour, organising exhibitions and other events in collaboration with venues in the Netherlands and abroad, such as Art Rotterdam, Amsterdam Art Weekend, the Spring Performance Festival, WIELS Art Book Fair, Brussels and Poppositions, Brussels.