Master Institute of Visual Cultures graduation show 2021: Live Alone and Die Together

We are pleased to welcome you to the St. Joost School of Art and Design—Master Institute of Visual Cultures 2021 graduation show, showcased online at thecurrent.is, and on-site at the Den Bosch campus (book your time slot here).

Built during times of uncertainty, “being dangerously likely to fall or collapse” marks the exhibition titled Live Alone and Die Together.

In the Visual Arts department, practices range from painting and sculpture to moving image. Some question the boundaries between each other, creating ecosystems of entangled trails, unruly queer bodies subsumed by growing organic matter, while others directly question and explore the friction that arises between their own and others’ cultural identities. Others use pre-existing commodified objects as a starting point to bring to life something new out of the ordinary. 

About the show
Coming off perhaps a bit cynical or blunt, Live Alone and Die Together refers to the feeling of fragility that lingers beneath our human structures, putting into question our grand plans for prosperity, progress and permanence. It is no longer possible to ignore that humanity is interconnected to a broader ecosystem that is becoming increasingly unbalanced, making many of us question what really matters; and that is, togetherness. Live Alone implies the situation of loneliness that we are experiencing as we are all atomized within the cells of our own homes, living through the 2D virtual world during the time of the pandemic. Yet even beyond COVID-19, it refers to our contemporary life, the privatization and bounded individualism that defines life during capitalist and technological accelerationism, where collectivity and shared spaces are no longer a given. The second part of the title, Die Together stresses the importance of sticking together through these turbulent times. It is a promise that as a collective we can stand and face the inevitable, even if it is until the very end.  

Regardless of the versatility of the practices, one thing they find in common is criticality over the pre-established ways of looking at the world. It is all about destabilizing the stable, revealing the turbulence as we chose to stay with the trouble that the current times point us toward, to open new ways of seeing.

Online at: thecurrent.is. Book your time slot here.

About Master Institute of Visual Cultures (MIVC)
The MIVC provides a transformative education, empowering students to become the new generation of artists and designers who will contribute in unconventional ways to changing the complex and interconnected world we live in.

By creating a unique educational environment, where the tradition of studio practices sit at ease with practices driven by ideas and context, and where artists and designers together, through an interchange of ways of thinking, create new knowledge to tackle some of the most pressing and challenging societal issues of our time.