Artist Talk: Ansuya Blom

During the past forty years, Ansuya Blom (Groningen, 1956) has built up an oeuvre that explores the boundaries of the world of our inner experiences. In drawings, collages, films and installations, she unravels the complex relationships humans maintain with themselves, the other and the external world. These relationships often involve misconceptions and confusion. In recent years, Eye has been working with the artist to conserve and restore her films.

Blom studied at the art academy, and in addition obtained a master’s degree in psychoanalytical studies. This interest in the human psyche, psychiatry and the abject is expressed in her work. She studies scientific attempts to understand the spirit, focusing principally on people who don’t conform to the dominant norm.

Her films and drawings are often inspired by patient reports and biographies. Instead of classifying people and seeing them as deviant, Blom resists definitions and the imposed structures we apply in our attempts to comprehend the world. Because it is in such categorisations that risks of limitation and control lurk. Blom’s work gets under our skin, revealing the underlying search.

Programme

The programme is made up of a discussion between the artist and curator Laurie Cluitmans alongside screening of films and clips from her oeuvre, activist films from the 1970s Ansuya Blom saw in Suriname, followed by the new digital restoration of Joe Faces (1996, 10'), a poetic film about a confused man who withdraws into himself. As the film progresses, his alienation increases and he is less and less able to withstand external stimuli.