Identification Embroidery
for Sightless Seeing #4 - Acquisitions by Sarah van Lamsweerde
2020 - Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam - Gemeentelijke Kunstaankopen

For the exhibition of proposals for the museums collection titled In The Presence Of Absence, Sarah developed a tour through the works which deal with what is commonly left unseen. The perfomers Alicia Hoost and Leroy de Bock live with visual impairment. Sarah and I invited Alicia and Leroy to respond with visual output to sensory input such as touch, smell, sound, taste etc. I transferred personal characteristics of their lines to embroidery as a way to identity one another through a sense other than the eye. To challenge the idea of being visible, I dyed the clothes in the same blue as the carpet landscape which invites audience to sit rather than experience the exhibition strictly vertically. The flip-flop/sock ensemble is a constant in the uniforms of the experts in Sarah van Lamsweerdes performative tours, making an appeal for a sense of empathy as well as a science fictional approach to uniform.