Where I'm calling from

Where I’m calling from is a new installation by Dutch artist Minne Kersten. Originally conceived as a filmset, the installation refers to a type of cinematic architecture that can beckon spectres, ghosts and phantoms. The work, existing as a diptych, was first created in Montreuil, Paris (April 2024), where it was used to shoot a film. Kersten, with an interest in moths and their symbolic potential, invited a flock of moths (papillon de nuit) to inhabit the space at night. The film was shot during the last hours of the day, at the moment when the light fades and we can no longer discern things precisely. The installation is re-imagined for this exhibition as a half-memory and confabulation, creating a friction between a staged past and reconstruction of memory. Using moths as inhabitants, these crepuscular creatures represent a shift between day and night, endings and beginnings, life and death. Their flight to light often leads to their death, yet they are biologically trapped in this obsession. In this sense, both moths and ghosts have a similar relationship with light and visibility. They become more visible in the dark, like investigators or projections that study and witness the events happened inside of their contained spaces. Presenting the structure of an attic, Minne has created and collected objects to construct a detailed environment. Working with a quote from Edger Allen Poe, she designed her own wallpaper with a pattern of moths hidden inside. Traditionally, wallpaper was an instrument to use in architecture for dreams, escape and hallucinations. Poe talks about the notion of ‘distinction’, between the real and the imaginary, between waking and sleeping, between sanity and psychosis, that come alive in rooms adorned by repetitive patterns. A visitor moving through the attic like installation might have the experience of a trespasser, archeologist or a reader, arriving at a time where something has happened or will happen. Faced with details and traces of lost memories, the visitors walking through this staged setting, cannot be the actors, but are more likely to be ghosts from the present haunting a simulacrum of the past. Minne Kersten lives and works in Amsterdam. Her work has been presented in numerous institutions including the Bonnefanten Museum 2023, 16th Lyon Biennale 2022, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam 2022, the Living Art Museum 2022, Hotel Maria Kapel 2021, HISK Brussel 2021, Haus Wien 2021, and De Ateliers 2020, among others. In 2022 she was awarded the Volkskrant Visual Arts Audience Award and was nominated for the Royal Award of Modern Painting. She has been selected for residencies at De Ateliers 2018-2020, Triangle Astérides 2023, and Cité Internationale Des Arts 2024. She is represented by Annet Gelink Gallery in Amsterdam. The film connected to this work will be on show at CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain de Bordeaux from June 2024 - January 2025 for the exhibition Phantom Itineraries. The exhibition is presented as part of Glasgow International Festival 2024, and has been kindly supported by Glasgow International with funds form the Scottish Government’s Festival EXPO Fund, Creative Scotland and the Mondriaan Fund.