WILL-O’-THE-WISP

  • Tropenmuseum
  • Amsterdam
  • NL
  • 2017

Exhibition design for Aleppo.

How do you convey through images the cultural-historical importance of one of the oldest cities in the world in times of war? Photographs, postcards, filmclips, an ancient manuscript and oral history by a divers team of former inhabitants of Aleppo presented around a large scale urban model offered a multidimensional impression of the city both before and during the war.

Photographs, thematically arranged in five sections, are carefully laid out on the ground, referring to the famous picture by Maurice Jarnoux of André Malraux. Positioned on differentiated beds of concrete building bricks they mimick the spatial grid and material atmosphere of an imaginary city. Each single photograph is individually lit by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Videos, one with each thematic section, are projected on the bare museum walls. Large photo prints on semi-transparant textile spatially differentiate the five thematic sections. The many individual lights shimmer through the gently moving textile prints, casting the shadows of wandering visitors in an infinite image of confusion and solidarity.

Maurice Jarnoux: André Malraux, 1954 (le musée imaginaire, the museum without walls)