studio Claus Wiersma

Truth, facts, memories, reality: are they all constructions? The artists Broomberg & Chanarin, Omer Fast, Chia-Wei Hsu and Meiro Koizumi deploy not only film and video but also slide projections, photographs and sound to investigate and ‘unmask’ the past.
Reportage, re-enactment, documentary and filmic techniques are some of the strategies that these artists apply to expose the subjectivity of historical sources and the limitations of memory. In stories set in various places around the world, they investigate the construction of narratives and the manner in which stories change when told and retold from different perspectives.

The works on display shed light on the history of conflict zones, those places in the world where truth and fiction are brought into sharp focus. Broomberg & Chanarin, Omer Fast, Chia-Wei Hsu and Meiro Koizumi look at the representation of war. Can a war be recounted? Is it possible to depict a war? And what is the role of the artist in this regard? These questions act as catalysts for various stories, many of them unknown or forgotten, events that happened in World War II and the Cold War, as well as more recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan.