OFLUXO

The title of the exhibition refers to the widespread idea that mental distress is a personal problem – a condition for which only the individual is responsible. The artists Sophie Hoyle and Barbora Kleinhamplová continuously deconstruct this notion and shed light on collective and political aspects of anxiety, illness and trauma.
 
As we live in a society where mental health problems and sickness have been privatised, internalised self-blame is a natural reaction. Privatization of these conditions creates an easy path to pathology. It’s Not Your Fault communicates that these experiences are perhaps not pathological but a proportionate reaction. Capitalism has laced our all spectrum of social and private life with anxiety. In this machine, we loop, we circulate. We are on display. Non-consensually choosing between fight or flight. We seek remedies, yet the widely-used ones don’t work for us.

The installation sets the works of Barbora Kleinhamplová and Sophie Hoyle into a dialogue and creates an incubator to portray our complex human experience. Their multimedia works are characterised by profound research that also builds on personal experiences. Therapeutic practices in companies portraying a laughing yoga session, pressure to perform and life in the precariat, which is critically examined in Kleinhamplová’s work, are linked to Hoyle’s work on the anxiety and trauma of living in complex systems of oppression.

The multimedia installation combines video works, writing and objects to create a repeating cycle of anxieties, neuro acoustic stimuli, curving, moving or overloaded bodies. In the vertigo of this vortex, which gives one the feeling of the motion of a machine that can hardly be interrupted, we want to speak to you: It’s Not Your Fault.