NATASCHA NIEDERSTRASS
RUINENLUST
SEPTEMBER 28 TO NOVEMBER 9, 2024
ARTIST RECEPTION:
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2024
2 P.M. TO 6 P.M.
The body of work, Ruinenlust, explores a curious psychopathology of being drawn to what one fears most. We do not simply stumble upon ruins, we seek them out to linger among their tottering, moldering forms - the great broken rhythm of collapsing vaults, truncated columns, crumbling plinths - and savor the thrill of decline and fall, of destabilized totality.
Natascha Niederstrass’s new exhibition addresses this fascination with decay and the morbid while also bringing out a post-romantic imaginary of ruined space in relation to its history. This work focuses more specifically on the uninhabited island of Poveglia, located in the Venetian Lagoon, which has recently gained worldwide fame as the “most haunted island in the world.”
Through this body of work, Niederstrass also examines the way in which this narrative has rebounded on the island, attracting paranormal enthusiasts. Behind a seemingly trivial narrative, the in-betweenness or transitory state of ghosts (conceived as cultural objects capable of activating an emotional sphere that goes beyond a rational understanding of place) allows us to reconceptualize the discontinuities of time and space, the disconnection between vernacular and academic cultures and the classic dichotomies attributed to island spaces. The case of Poveglia shows how ghosts can shape the way narratives are told and reveals how our desire to mythologize reality transcends historical fact.
The materiality of the abandoned island and the dynamics of a partial return to wilderness, the degradation of unmaintained buildings has reduced some structures to the state of remains that have been gradually invaded by vegetation. This process has given the place an aura of impermeability, obscurity, and mystery, especially when compared with the highly domesticated, urban Venetian landscape.
Considering this, the island of Poveglia is the perfect embodiment of the Gothic, conferring this fear of inheritance in time with a claustrophobic feeling of confinement in space. The cultural clichés that tend to conceive of insularity as a metaphor for death and mystery have been reinforced in this case by the backdrop of Venice, a city that prides itself on its tale of decadence. In this sense, then, it is also impossible to deny the paradigm whereby Venice has been seen and perceived since the nineteenth century as a city whose decay is inevitable, and whose macabre degradation and flamboyant death have helped to construct the myth that surrounds it. In fact, a staggering number of tourists come here every year to see it die.
It is by establishing multiple dialogues between expert sources of knowledge and their popular reception, between imagination and reality, between suggestions and 'fake news' and between official history and vernacular narratives that Niederstrass will attempt to understand the story of the haunted Poveglia. The body of work will consist of photographs captured by the artist during two illegal expeditions to the forbidden island to observe the place, what it confers, official and historical documents, interviews with Venetian citizens and excerpts from the media that play an important role in the representations and fictionalizations of the island of Poveglia today.
The case of Poveglia shows how ghosts, intended, and perceived by different actors as metaphors, presences, absences, liminal entities, or even as easy sensationalist bait, respond to a need to reappropriate reality to transport it into the world of myths and thus give us a certain impression of control over the reality that eludes us.