When the Sun Goes Down
02.02.2024-03.03.2024
Invited as guest curator at Galleri CC in Malmö. When the Sun Goes Down is a group exhibition that through light-sensitive processes, image creation, and writing, explores the self in relation to mathematical and structural perspectives and thresholds the natural environment evokes. Artworks by artists Assem Hendawi, Oona Libens, Lisa Tan, and Joline Uvman elicit linguistic and visual alterations, imitations of the physical world, and meditations on the correlation between the mental processes and the cycles of the landscape.
Excerpt from exhibition essay:
A recurring choreography caused by the rotating Earth creates the illusion of a sunset, to which humans feel a peculiar pull. Shortly after the event appears a spatiotemporal moment when the sunlight is about to disappear and be replaced by our concerns about its absence. Planetary movement makes darkness, light, and shadows inseparable from perception of our surroundings and part of many philosophical and cultural traditions touching on themes of life, energy, and transformation, and as symbols and metaphors of human existence and its doubts. The circadian rhythm affects almost all organisms and controls our sleep-wake cycles through bright and dark periods, an inbuilt system for survival. As daylight shifts, the biological clock changes, as do our sensations of the world. Sunlight hitting the eyes signals to alter the body's levels of melatonin and cortisol and provides us with vitamins. At twilight, the light recedes, and our bodies slowly become less active, but the sun never sets online. 24/7 late capitalism and life with light-emitting displays offer another logic than the cycles of Earth. Long-term disturbance of our diurnal rhythm has consequences on health, such as increasing sleep problems and insulin sensitivity, impaired immune function, and depression. In this 24-hour connected society, do we need to assert our right to sleep and retreat into the shadows?
Sara Rossling
Curator
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