On Photography & Truth: Interview with Artist Sebastian Riemer

Video Essay by Tabi. Feb 26, 2024

What is photography and how can it be used to manipulate reality? Tabi speaks with photographer Sebastian Riemer about his thoughts on the state of the artform and its potential in the digital age. 📸

Royals and Rebels

Exhibition review by Tabi. Now 5, 2023

Royals & Rebels, Exhibition of British Fashion at the Kunstmuseum. The Hague, Netherlands

Foxes, horses, wigs, scones, Harry Potter and Union Jacks. What images come to your mind when you think of the UK?

Anglomania is a pretty crazy phenomenon (I know through my own grandparents), an obsession with all things seemingly representative of ‘the British’, and this is part of what it looks like for the Dutch. I always find exhibitions wanting to represent the entirety of a nation or region very ambitious and interesting. For me, the most fun part became watching people observe and interact with the clothes displayed. There were little girls taking pictures in awe, lots of older women analysing in depth and a school class with boys in tracksuits answering a worksheet on different sections (eg a country, a Scottish and a punk section).

Clearly the exhibition showed specifically British high-fashion, not fashion more generally, borrowing pieces from Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney and the Princess Diana Museum. This makes sense when you find out who designed it; Maarten Spruyt, a “stylist, icon, maximalist and avid-collector” based in Amsterdam. But what’s to expect from an exhibition of British fashion in the Netherlands, right? Of course if an exhibition of British Fashion were to be shown in the UK itself there would be higher expectations of it representing more than ppl w the money to wear designer clothes, but paint a more holistic picture of British people, because visitors would actually care. But in the Netherlands, there first has to be that appeal to Dutch people’s understanding of Britishness packaged in scones, foxes, horses, wigs and most importantly, royals.

Curating is such a powerful practice, you hold a lot of responsibility when you are the one representing the supposed truth of an entire culture or region to your audience. Visitors adjust their understanding of the places represented and what is deemed ‘British’ in accordance with what’s shown. I wonder how exhibitions showing art from abroad will change as museums become more ‘woke’. If the same contents of this exhibition were laid out differently and surrounded with different images (imagine for example images of Notting Hill Carnival), how would that change the dutch visitors understanding of what ‘British’ means? What and whose art will be shown and how will Britishness be presented in other countries while the term British changes meaning within the UK itself? Is it anyone’s responsibility to make sure it eventually gets represented as something British people could agree with? Maybe we should just give the Dutch ladies what they want.