The Vocabulary of the Cage

partner: Van Eyck Academie, Het Nieuwe Instituut
location: Maastricht (NL)
year: 2020

The cage is a simplified model of nature, where energy flows and is transformed, where habitats, climates and matter are abstracted, where life and death unfold. It is also the medium through which those inside and outside of it are defined, guests and hosts, captives and keepers, the physical language through which two species communicate. The cage transcends the boundary between the ornamental and the practical, ultimately representing the human as the specie that mediates its encounters with the world through objects. From the timid bird feeder to literal enclosures, the Vocabulary of the Cage proposes forms and materials for exercises in negotiation and new encounters, reflecting on the ideas of territory, boundary, border, proximity, and domestication through acts of invasion, retreat, and coexistence.