Still from the On Earth video tour: Mark Dorf

On Earth Video Tour - Mark Dorf

Still from the On Earth tour: Lucas Foglia

On Earth Video Tour - Lucas Foglia

Still from the On Earth video tour: Drew Nikonowicz

On Earth Video Tour - Drew Nikonowicz

Still from the On Earth Tour: Mishka Henner

On Earth Video Tour - Mishka Henner

On Earth Video Tour - Introduction

Do you want to learn more about the work of photographer Alec Soth? Join curator Hinde Haest in our online video tour as she takes you through the current exhibition I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating.

-&gt;&nbsp;<a href="/book-a-visit/public/curator-video-tour-alec-soth-i-know-how-furiously-your-heart-is-beating/04-11-2020">Sign up by making a small donation</a> and receive the link to the online tour directly in your inbox.
The exhibition <a href="/museum/programme/alec-soth-i-know-how-furiously-your-heart-is-beating">I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating</a> by Alec Soth&nbsp;consists of portraits of remarkable people in their habitat and still-lifes of their personal belongings. Join curator Hinde Haest in an online tour of the exhibition as she zooms in on the featured works and gives insight into Soth's new way of working and the inspirations behind this intimate and introspective photography series.
<img src="https://a.storyblok.com/f/113697/595x744/bf8727fa29/olga__berlin__2018_c_alec_soth__magnum_photos.jpg" alt="" />Olga, Berlin, 2018&nbsp;&copy; Alec Soth / Magnum Photos.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION The most recent project of photographer Alec Soth,&nbsp;<a href="/museum/programme/alec-soth-i-know-how-furiously-your-heart-is-beating">I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating</a>, is the result of this personal search, and marks a departure from Soth&rsquo;s earlier work. The photographer slowed down his work process and turned the lens inward. Foam presents the first museum exhibition of his new series, consisting of portraits of remarkable people in their habitat, and still-lifes of their personal belongings.
The exhibited works are on loan from Loock Gallery in Berlin and private lenders.
Foam is supported by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, City of Amsterdam, Foam Members, Olympus and the VandenEnde Foundation.

<div class="sidebar__content">SIGN UP 
Sign up by making a small donation and receive the link to the online tour directly in your inbox. 
PRICE Donation of &euro;2,50 (free for members) 
COME AND SEE <a href="/museum/programme/alec-soth-i-know-how-furiously-your-heart-is-beating">I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating</a> is on show until 6 December at Foam.</div>

Curator Video Tour:  Alec Soth - I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating

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 is the well-known Photoshop selection tool of the same name. For Xin Li, the tool is much more than a handy feature to edit images. It becomes a means to draw parallels with societal control and censorship during the COVID lockdowns in China.  

The magic wand tool selects areas of images based on colour and hue—allowing smart selection and quick manipulation of images. Enforced with machine learning, it nowadays easily predicts which objects a user would like to see selected. Xin Li uses the tool to distort images, obscuring their original meaning behind layers of other images, often of other artworks.  

For Xin Li, this process symbolises the mechanisms of hiding and revealing facts and fake news, regulating the flow of information and controlling the dominant narrative. Metaphorically captured in the overwhelming fusion of shapes and colours, the visually explosive works tempt the viewer to look what lies beneath the apparent chaos. 

Xin Li

Stuck at home during the COVID-19 lockdown, Shwe Wutt Hmon was unable to visit the hospital for her regular check-ups and scans, necessary because of a life-long health issue. Coming to terms with this limitation, she started scanning her body, as well as flowers and medical records, by herself with an ordinary at-home scanner, creating a variety of abstract self-portraits. 

 that emerged from these experiments, reveal a poetic and symbolic documentation of the ongoing assault of medical procedures and operations on her body. Hmon’s image-making practice strongly ties together process and concept: the withering flowers symbolise the decay of the body and dark colours reflect somber emotions experienced right before scheduled operations.  

Another dimension was added when she moved from Myanmar to Thailand in 2022. Printing her work on local Saa paper, the works received an almost skin-like texture. Again, restrictions–this time due to the delicate paper type–required her to improvise, causing her to print the works small scale at home. The final accumulated process turned out to present a healing capacity: by carefully printing, cutting and sewing her works together, Shwe ultimately was also mending herself.

From the series I Do Miss Hospital Visit

Shwe Wutt Hmon

From the series (Inter)Faces of Predictions

, Sheung Yiu looks into different practices of face reading, facial prediction and facial recognition. For this multi-medial series, consisting of a video essay, a series of self-portraits and an extensive research notebook of visual references, he submitted his own face as a test case: scanning, screening and analysing his features in order to understand the processes behind it. 

In his practice, Sheung Yiu combines East-Asian traditions of facial readings, promising to predict one's future based on facial features, with contemporary facial recognition technologies, drawing a striking parallel between Eastern and Western practices around facial studies.  

On a deeper level, the project questions the way different technologies, whether digital or analogue, algorithmic or esoteric, shape the perceptions and biases connected to our faces. Through this, he recognises that a face is never just a face: it is what we, or the systems we use, want to read into it. 

Animation

Notebook scan, from the series Interfaces of Prediction

Facial landmarks (2023), from the series Interfaces of Predictions

Twisted Face (2023), from the series Interfaces of Predictions

Fortune in My Thirties from the series Interfaces of Predictions, 2023

Faceless (2023), from the series Interfaces of Predictions

Scan (2023), from the series Interfaces of Predictions

Between Two Charts (2023), from the series Interfaces of Predictions

Old and new moles (2023), from the series Interfaces of Predictions

Face Mesh (2023), from the series Interfaces of Predictions

Ancient Prediction (2023), from the series Interfaces of Predictions

Sheung Yiu

In search for a sense of belonging, Rehab Eldalil traced back her family roots to the Bedouin community of South Sinai, Egypt. This confirmed a spiritual connection she long felt towards the region and sent her on a ten-year long collaboration with the locals of St. Catherine, guiding herself through the lands of her ancestors. 

The Longing of the Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken (

شوق الغريب للي تقطّع سبيله)

 Rehab closely participates with community members during this longstanding encounter, weaving together photographs with sound, video, and local Bedouin traditions of poetry, embroidery and plant medicines in a truly collaborative effort. 

The works emphasise the strong connection of the close-knit Bedouin community to their land, as its protective keeper. At the same time, the project reveals the hardships and constant struggle against displacement, violence, and governmental power, to which the community continues to be subjected. Recent plans for urban developments in the region stress the urgency of the project, becoming a testament of and protest to protect the natural state of the lands and its indigenous keepers. 

Oh Valley

From the series The Longing of the Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken

From the series The Longing Of The Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken

From the project The Longing of The Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken

Allaseeq (The Sticker)

From the Series The Longing of the Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken

Alrabel (Mountain Tea)

From the series The Longing of The Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken

Rehab Eldalil

records the artist’s personal search for her heritage. With little to no information about her family history, MAryam Touzani sets off on a journey tracing the story of her Moroccan ancestry and multicultural upbringing. 

Using her teeth—carriers of one’s unique genetic encoding—as a starting point, MAryam Touzani photographs and assembles all the pieces of evidence she can collect: from dental X-rays and passport images, to her father’s death certificate and colonial maps omitting her ancestor’s region of origin. In her investigation where answers do not seem to come straightforward, photography becomes a poetic tool, allowing Touzani to reconstruct her past, in order to imagine her future.  

The title refers to the scientific name of the argan tree, one of the oldest existing trees growing in the Sous valley in southwestern Morocco. Traditionally, the fruits are processed into argan oil by women from the local Amazigh community. As an Amazigh woman, but born and raised in The Netherlands, MAryam Touzani uses the symbol of the argan tree to trace back her roots and honour her female ancestors. 

Smile

Denture

From the series Argania: Lack of Information is my Family History

If I take care of you, will u stay with me for a lifetime

Go fix it

From the series Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History

Laugh MAryam laugh

Land of Afrika

Teeth bus stop

Behind the Abri

Traceable

MAryam Touzani

The West Desert, located on the western shore of the Great Salt Lake in Utah (USA), is the ancestral home of the indigenous Goshute people. Though officially public lands, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, this area is largely used for various privatised or military purposes, ranging from mining operations, testing grounds for weapons and improvised gun ranges.  

, Jaclyn Wright visited these cluttered sites, full of discarded targets and shattered clay pigeons. The bullet-holed remains, which she collected, photographed and filmed, are pieced together into performative installations, that reflect on the colonisation of ancient lands by bureaucratic systems.  

By inserting herself into the scene, wearing a skintight bodysuit made out of orange clay pigeons, Wright comments on the hyper-masculine culture of land dominance and cowboy fantasies. The synthetic orange colour becomes symbolic: used to enhance visibility, it signifies the strong opposition and rejection of its natural environment. 

Untitled (BLM arrows I)

From the series High Visibility (Blaze Orange)

Antelope Island (Utah) Buffalo Hunt photograph collection, Digital MSSC782, No. 6, Altered

L. Clyde Anderson photograph collection (1910- 1959), P0158, Box 1, Folder 27, Altered

Charles James Neal photograph collection (1900 - 1920s), P0694, Box 1, Folder 4, Altered

The West Desert is located on the western side of the Great Salt Lake [UT, United States]. Historically, this area has been documented through photography and land surveys, supporting the violent exploitation of the landscape. 

Archives, II

Untitled (grid)

Nearly one-third of the West Desert's 7.7 million acres are used as biological and chemical weapons testing grounds. The remaining areas of the West Desert are open to various uses, including improvised gun ranges.

Collected Targets

Collected Targets, from the series High Visibility (Blaze Orange)

L. Clyde Anderson photograph collection (1910- 1959), P0158, Box 1, Folder 6, Altered

Stansbury Island, the second largest island in the Great Salt Lake, echoes with gunfire and is littered with bullet holes, clay pigeons and improvised targets. The Bureau of Land Management refers to this detritus as "trigger trash".

Found Clay Pigeons

Archives, V

Jaclyn Wright

is a close observation of performance in everyday life. Which roles do we act out on a daily basis and how does that influence our identities? Using the metaphor of the theatre to separate private (

) spheres, Eleonora Agostini studies her mother’s behaviours, gestures and expressions in her job as a waitress. 

Puzzling together photographs, archival images, moving images and texts into various collages, Eleonora Agostini breaks down the layers of performance one by one, revealing the repetitiveness of gestures, habits and adopted mannerisms used in serving clients.  

The work is also a commentary on the feminist theory of the “gaze”. The restaurant becomes the space where her mother is both the observer and the observed, where parts of her public behaviour as a waitress bleed into her private behaviour of being an individual, woman, and mother. Through her project, Agostini examines this relationship between the female body and the different social roles it performs in different spaces. 

From the series A Study on Waitressing

Eleonora Agostini

from the series Las Flores Mueren Dos Veces

 is a personal exploration of loss, grief and reconciliation following the death of the artist’s father. Through various tools of digital creation and manipulation, Cristóbal Ascencio created a poetic exploration of his personal memories, altering family photos and recreating the last garden his father worked on.  

Fifteen years after his father passed away, Cristóbal Ascencio learned that his death had been a suicide. The last words of Margarito’s farewell letter stated: “Forgive me and communicate with me.” This new piece of information triggered Ascencio to revisit the images, places and memories connected to his family history.  

In an attempt to answer his father’s final request, he digitally recreated a collection of plants based on his father’s instructions as well as an immersive garden, where the plants function as a bridge between past and present. Using different digital techniques, such as ‘data bending’, photogrammetry and 3D modelling, Ascencio plays on the idea that our memories are manufactured, manipulated and corrupted over time.  

Margarito, from the series Las Flores Mueren Dos Veces. Data bending on archival photography.

Nacer, from the series Las Flores Mueren Dos Veces. Databending on archival photography.

Bromelia, from the series Las Flores Mueren Dos Veces. Digital photography and photogrammetry

Wedding, from the series Las Flores Mueren Dos Veces. Databending on archival photography.

Letter, from the series Las flores mueren dos veces

Monstera Deliciosa, from the series Las Flores Mueren Dos Veces. Digital photography and photogrammetry

Burial, from the series Las Flores Mueren Dos Veces. Data bending on archival photography.

Birthday, from the series Las Flores Mueren Dos Veces. Databending on archival photography.

Tagetes Erecta, from the series Las Flores Mueren Dos Veces. Digital photography and photogrammetry

Lucha Libre, from the series Las Flores Mueren Dos Veces. Databending on archival photography.

from the series Las floren mueren dos veces

Cristóbal Ascencio

Unidentified flying objects, ships floating above the water or identical strangers: the internet holds a vast collection of real-world ‘glitches’: errors or optical illusions that occur in the world around us but cannot be explained rationally. Inspired by movies like 

, these puzzling phenomena spark online discussion, often satirical, about whether we might exist in a simulation, rather than the real world.

, artist duo Andrea Orejarena and Caleb Stein look exactly at this blurry line between fact and fiction, fuelled by the overwhelming flow of images coming our way through our screens on a daily basis. The artists treat the internet as a collective subconscious where evidence for real-life glitches is constantly posted, shared, and reshared. 

The large collection of found internet footage that they built over the years inspired them to search for sites across the United States that reminded them of such glitches. The resulting series of serene yet uncanny landscape photography leave the viewer in an unsettling space, confused between what might be real and what might be fake.

Syntethic Street Collage

Found footage from the series American Glitch

Abraham Lincoln and Drone from the series American Glitch, 2021

Real Bird in Fake Tree, 2022. From the series American Glitch

Desert Facade 1, 2022. From the series American Glitch

Egg Glitch. From the series American Glitch

Very Large Array, New Mexico. From the series American Glitch

Life on Mars Training Simulation, 2021. From the series American Glitch

From the project American Glitch

Cloud Glitch, 2021. From the series American Glitch

Desert Firing Range, 2022. From the series American Glitch

Fake Training Battle in Replica Iraqi Village

From the series American Glitch

Herndon Climb, 2023. From the series American Glitch

California City Paper Roads, Aerial View 1 of 9, 2022. From the series American Glitch

Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein

André Ramos-Woodard

, André Ramos-Woodard addresses the widespread anti-Black racism deeply rooted in American society. The work centres around the idea that to heal from the harm and pain caused by this, it's essential to acknowledge its history.

Critiquing the media's portrayal of Black individuals through stereotypical imagery, Ramos-Woodard takes a unique approach. He recreates illustrations of Black people, found throughout the history of cartooning, and blends them with his own photographs that celebrate Black identity, inspired by his personal experiences. 

Drawing from his lifelong love of comic books and anime, Ramos-Woodard seamlessly combines photography and illustration, creating a visual language that unites contrasting realities. Through this approach, he confronts the audience with the long-lasting effects of racial hierarchies, using the familiar and funny aspects of cartoons to turn them into a tool to advocate for change.

Authenticity (2 CHAINZ), 2022, from the series BLACK SNAFU

My people have had to cry, scream, and fight for respect for centuries, and we still have not gained what we deserve.

Trophies, 2020, from the series BLACK SNAFU

Buds, 2020, from the series BLACK SNAFU

BLACK SNAFU

Drawing Mickey in Melodrama

Coonin' and bafoonin', 2023, from the series BLACK SNAFU

Niggas at the park, 2021, from the series BLACK SNAFU

Hate monger, 2022, from the series BLACK SNAFU

United States education system, 2022, from the series BLACK SNAFU

To move past the damage [anti-Blackness] has done to our society, we can’t simply deny our history—we must recognize it.

BL!NG, 2020, from the series BLACK SNAFU

Zooted, 2020, from the series BLACK SNAFU

In 1947, when the British left India after 89 years of colonial rule, the land was divided into two countries: Pakistan and India. Known as the Partition of India, this enforced and hastily drawn line sparked a violent mass migration of fifteen million people, changing the course of history on the subcontinent for generations to come.  

, Aaryan Sinha documented his journey across five Indian states bordering with Pakistan. The photographs capture his travels in an intuitive and poetic way, and together investigate how historical events, like the partition, influence the Indian landscape and the identity of its people, including his own. 

At the core of the project lies Aaryan’s attempt to depict a version of India that is truer to his experience, one of similarity and connection, rather than division and opposition. Through this, his project also exposes the relationship between photography and colonialism—aiming to revoke the stereotypical perception of a poor, overpopulated nation held by many in the West. 

Video

Hinde Haest talks about

Mark Dorf in the exhibition On Earth

Hinde Haest talks about

Lucas Foglia in the exhibition On Earth

Hinde Haest talks about

Drew Nikonowicz in the exhibition On Earth

Hinde Haest talks about

Mishka Henner in the exhibition On Earth

Hinde Haest gives us

an introduction to On Earth

Curator Video Tour: Alec Soth - I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating

Visit

Xin Li

Shwe Wutt Hmon

Sheung Yiu

Rehab Eldalil

MAryam Touzani

Jaclyn Wright

Eleonora Agostini

Cristóbal Ascencio

Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein

André Ramos-Woodard

Aaryan Sinha

Twee Keer Kijken

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