BOOK LAUNCH, PREMIERE AND LECTURE

On Sunday 3 April, a new monograph of the artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s work, entitled Amateur, will be presented at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The presentation of the book will be accompanied by the Netherlands premiere of Van Oldenborgh’s latest film From Left to Night (2015), a screening of her earlier work Bete & Deise (2012), and a lecture by author and curator David Dibosa, who has been a key player in a number of Van Oldenborgh’s films. The artist alongside The Showroom’s Director Emily Pethick, If I Can’t Dance’s Director Frédérique Bergholtz and Stedelijk Museum’s Curator of Theory and Interpretation Britte Sloothaak, will provide an introduction to the publication and the afternoon’s event.

Amateur is the first comprehensive publication about Van Oldenborgh’s moving image works, and their accompanying installations. Developed over the past ten years of her practice, these works explore communication and interaction between individuals, often against the backdrop of a unique public location, in order to cast attention on repressed, incomplete and unresolved histories. Through the staging of these encounters on film, Van Oldenborgh enables multiple perspectives and voices to coexist, and brings to light political, social and cultural relationships and how they are manifested through social interactions.

The publication is generously illustrated and brings together a wealth of texts by artists, curators and writers who have been key interlocutors with Van Oldenborgh, and who each offer in-depth observations and reflections on a work from her oeuvre. These authors include: Nana Adusei-Poku, Ricardo Basbaum, Frédérique Bergholtz, Eric de Bruyn, Binna Choi, David Dibosa, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Avery F. Gordon, Tom Holert, Nataša Ilić, Charl Landvreugd, Sven Lütticken, Anna Manubens, Ruth Noack, and Grant Watson.

Amateur is published in conjunction with the Heineken Prize for Art, which Van Oldenborgh received in 2014 and is supported by the Mondriaan Fund. Amateur is edited by Emily Pethick and Wendelien van Oldenborgh with the assistance of David Morris, designed by Julia Born, and co-published by If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam; The Showroom, London; and Sternberg Press, Berlin.

Amateur: Wendelien van Oldenborgh
Edited by Emily Pethick and Wendelien van Oldenborgh with David Morris
Designed by Julia Born
Published by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, The Showroom, and Sternberg Press
ISBN 978-3-95679-191-8
Order from If I Can't Dance via shop@ificantdance.org
Price: €35,– Launch discount €25

SCREENING

1–2 April, 10–4pm; 3 April 10–2pm
Bete & Deise
Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Teijin Auditorium

 
To complement the launch event of Wendelien van Oldenborgh's new monograph, Amateur, at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, her film Bete & Deise (2012) will also be on view during opening hours from the 1–2 April, and before the launch on the 3 April. The screening will take place in the Stedelijk Museum’s Teijin Auditorium.

Bete & Deise stages an encounter between two women in a building under construction in Rio de Janeiro. Actress Bete Mendes and Baile funk singer Deise Tigrona have—each in their own way—given meaning to the idea of a public voice. Together these women talk about the use of their voice and their positions in the public sphere, allowing for the contradictions they each carry within themselves to surface. Through a montage that evocatively combines the voices of the women with their image, Van Oldenborgh confronts us with considerations on the relation between cultural production and politics and the potential power that is generated when public issues intersect with the personal.

Bete & Deise was produced as a commission for If I Can’t Dance’s Edition IV – Affect (2010–2012).