The Familiar Foreign (2023)

The Familiar Foreign
[2023]

Installation : images and soundscape
Teng Teng Ho and Vasilisa Ikryannikova 2022

Showcased in
- FAM at the Rose is a rose is a rose gallery Amsterdam 2022
- MAHA X NIKE Air Max day 2023 exhibition at the Looiersgracht Amsterdam

The experience that this installation aims to embody is the feeling that both Teng Teng and Vasilisa witnessed during their travels.

Teng Teng when visiting South Korea created these series of collages which transcend the multitude of scenes and layers of different recollections. This is embedded in the geometrical shapes, focus, contrasts in light, shades and colours. Teng Teng’s process starts with observation and how everything, even her own memories are unpredictable. The set up of the space, as the light radiates through the prints symbolises these ambiguities, distortions and disappearance.

For Vasilisa this experience arrived when she was visiting Tbilisi in Georgia. It was a feeling of excitement brought by the newness of her being there. But weirdly, familiarity echoed throughout her whole trip. She captured the majority of this through voice notes from field recordings. Sounds of nature, business of the concrete, conversations and radio stations. It is the distortion and assembly of these sounds together and the way these sounds travel that oscillate her part of the work.

This visual and auditory installation dwells on our experience of space through architecture and sound. It is the deconstruction of the many levels in which an individual experiences a city. This is reconstructed through the many layers by the means of which both the sound and the images were created. Both the prints and the sound are elements that have been overlayed in a way that highlights and hinders them in some aspects. This is the interpretation of what arriving in a new place can feel like sometimes. It is often quite a vibrant first impression which is the followed by the act of finding peace in the overwhelming experience. Peace through ambience, peace through composition. Disorder through business, chaos through disorientation. This work is about embodying the feeling comfort and safety. But still from a distance. The work is inviting, and it is to experience it as a whole, but just like a vacation you can only experience a glimpse of it at a time. Through our lens and through our experience layer over each other. It is something that has touched our soul and occupied our memory.

It is by no means a representation of the places we visited, but a display of how we as human beings are influenced by our environment where we are / where we grew up and how it skews our perception of the new places and things we encounter. Unravelling of memories based on identity.