mold’s exhibition devoted to milka havel at the sweden vandalorum art museum

‘the face of god’ is the title of milka belia havel’s (1571-1631) partially lost text about the search for order in chaos. it forms the basis for an exhibition at the vandalorum art museum, värnamo, sweden. the exhibition highlights the czech entomologist and artist milka havel’s life and works through reconstructed artefacts and images. the forgotten artist is made alive by interpretations, texts, reconstructions, and borrowed original works.

the center piece of the exhibition, walnut funnel that enhances sound

the face of god is the result of two years’ work within the framework of the ‘form follows fiction’ project, by the art and design group mold. in the exhibition baroque is confronted with modernism, design with art and science with mysticism. insects act as metaphors for the enigmatic and as a tool for a search for meaning. the exhibition’s central work is a four-meter long walnut funnel that analogously enhances the sound of insects.

the exhibition takes place in the vandalorum museum

a minimalistic expression with baroque associations characterises the objects, and the focus is on design’s narrative qualities. through narrations both in texts and objects, mold brings up questions about ownership of the history, who is remembered and why and how fiction changes the experience. complementary to the exhibition is a book with essays where among others ingrid elam, professor and culture writer, and fredrik sjöberg, author and biologist, write about the importance of milka havel today.

cocoon incubator

the form follows fiction project resulted in the exhibition the face of god and is cross-border in several ways and explores the tension between fiction and facts, art and science, history and the contemporary as well as text and objects. the concrete starting point of the project is exhibitions of historical persons as genres and the mythologizing and fictionalisation that are thereby created. of particular importance to the project is argentine writer jorge luis borges and the play between factuality and fiction expressed in his literary production.

meditation device for listening to bees

the project’s starting point is fictionalisation as a driving force in the design work. such a starting point holds a critique of a supposedly rational idea of ​​the design process as problem solving. form follows fiction aims at enhancing fiction and fictionalisation as tools for developing, transforming, and visualising design.

behive in walnus, glass and cast iron

artistically, the project relates to a tradition that stretches from contemporary designers, artists and projects such as dunne & raby, maywa denki, musée patamécanique, walid raad’s the atlas group, the museum of jurassic technology, bonk business inc and hokes archives to historic predecessors like jaques carelman’s catalog d’objets introuvables. projects and practitioners who, in different ways, get their nutrition from the tension between fact and fiction, between discourse and non-discourse, between an artistic approach and a more curative approach.

devices for capturing insects

the exhibition ‘the face of god’ could be described as a spatial novel. at a meta level, the importance of fiction for artistic creation is also investigated. form and content create meaning where contemporary discussions can be mirrored and decoded by viewers. 

сopper funnels for listening to cocoons hatching

flourescent lighting

day bed

butterfly table

butterfly table

reconstruction of milka havel’s living quarters

info:

location: vandalorum museum
dates: until 28/01/2018
mold team: karl-johan ekeroth, johnny friberg, håkan jutblad, jesper norda, mattias rask, christian strömqvist, frej wichmann