The video work Things Fall Apart takes its name from a book by Chin­ua Achebe, in which the author traces the birth of the Euro­pean coloni­sa­tion of the African con­ti­nent. Chin­ua Achebe had him­self bor­rowed the words from a poem, The Sec­ond Com­ing, by W. B. Yeats. Yeats wrote The Sec­ond Com­ing 100 years exact­ly before the onset of the Covid pan­dem­ic, dur­ing the Span­ish flu pandemic. 

‘Things Fall Apart is a video instal­la­tion, which devel­oped through Haya-Bavier­a’s desire to cre­ate some­thing that was a response to, or at least an inves­ti­ga­tion of her emo­tions sur­round­ing the pandemic.

She said, ​“I often find inspi­ra­tion in lit­er­a­ture, so I picked up a copy of Robin­son Cru­soe hop­ing that with­in it, I would find a man­u­al to build a sanc­tu­ary, a place for self real­i­sa­tion and a refuge from the drea­ri­ness of iso­la­tion, as did Cru­soe on his Desert Island. Instead, this video work reveals how the myth of the trop­i­cal island has been bestowed upon us for cen­turies, and how the par­a­disi­a­cal ideas of immac­u­late sand beach­es, haven for wildlife and fau­na, are linked to his­tor­i­cal exploitation.” ’

Words by Noelle Collins, Cura­tor at Town­er Eastbourne.

Recent­ly Maud Haya-Baviera has been inter­est­ed in tourism; the pro­mo­tion­al images that it gen­er­ates, how it exem­pli­fies con­tem­po­rary con­sumerist desire, and this activity’s place with­in his­to­ries of explo­ration, exploita­tion and leisure indus­tries. In the artist’s recent work one can trace the devel­op­ment of this pre­oc­cu­pa­tion, from an ini­tial break with the past and nec­es­sary reassess­ment of a cul­tur­al­ly foun­da­tion­al text in Things Fall Apart, through to a nar­rat­ed slideshow of over­sat­u­rat­ed post­card imagery. Seem­ing­ly typ­i­cal, or inno­cent, snip­pets of hol­i­day cor­re­spon­dence reveal trou­bling atti­tudes in Wish You Were Here. With Things Fall Apart, shown at Site Gallery as part of the exhi­bi­tion Heavy Water, an ini­tial plan to engage with themes of self-suf­fi­cien­cy and the diaris­tic form through Robin­son Cru­soe swift­ly became unten­able on reread­ing, lead­ing to a par­al­lel engage­ment with Chin­ua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, from which the work takes its name.

Haya-Baviera’s orig­i­nal idea had been influ­enced by the iso­la­tion and rep­e­ti­tion of liv­ing under pan­dem­ic lock­down restric­tions, and the way that this intu­itive response evolved through a crit­i­cal reassess­ment of the source mate­r­i­al is indica­tive of the artist’s approach in gen­er­al, where­by once a real­i­sa­tion takes place it must be addressed. A marked­ly polit­i­cal and social­ly engaged turn has tak­en place in Haya-Baviera’s work dur­ing the past few years, begin­ning loose­ly with The Waves (2019) and Kinder (2019), how­ev­er it is impor­tant to fore­ground aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence even in these works that refer explic­it­ly to con­tem­po­rary phe­nom­e­na and promi­nent polit­i­cal issues. The look, sound and feel of each work is dic­tat­ed by the start­ing point and sub­ject mat­ter, mean­ing that style and visu­al lan­guage can dif­fer great­ly between works. This is indica­tive of Haya-Baviera’s method of tak­ing the view­er on a nar­ra­tive jour­ney through her recent thoughts and real­i­sa­tions, with­out being par­tic­u­lar­ly didac­tic about it; speak­ing from a posi­tion of dis­cov­ery rather than authority.

For exam­ple, with­in Things Fall Apart a painter­ly vision of watery dis­as­ter is sound­tracked by a high­ly edit­ed col­lage of Maria Callas singing in Bellini’s Nor­ma, evok­ing asso­ci­a­tions of dra­ma and tragedy from the West­ern cul­tur­al can­non; J.W.M Turner’s The Slave Ship also comes to mind. But, the footage used by Haya-Baviera is solarised into shades of cyan­otype blue and bleached white, pre­clud­ing a straight­for­ward read­ing and con­trast­ing unnerv­ing­ly with the sat­u­rat­ed palette of hol­i­day adver­tise­ments that fol­low. Clipped footage from Robin­son Cru­soe adap­ta­tions and decades-old rep­re­sen­ta­tions of indige­nous cul­tur­al prac­tices cre­ates a stew of imagery that nonethe­less draws a clear line between racist colo­nial nar­ra­tives, anthro­po­log­i­cal prac­tices and the tourism industry.

With its asso­ci­a­tions of bright sun­light and hazy mem­o­ry, the visu­al aes­thet­ic of tourism is also present in Wish You Were Here, pre­sent­ed on a much small­er screen to the side of Things Fall Apart in Heavy Water, appear­ing like an off­shoot of thought that does indeed con­tin­ue and evolve fur­ther in the artist’s most recent work, and her still devel­op­ing ideas. For Haya-Baviera it was also impor­tant for these works, devel­oped dur­ing Plat­form 20, to func­tion in con­junc­tion with the work of Vic­to­ria Lucas and Joan­na Whit­tle at Site Gallery. While each artist had been work­ing indi­vid­u­al­ly, there are points of con­ver­gence and com­par­i­son that seem inevitable in their poignan­cy, with an explo­ration of alien­ation and a striv­ing for the sacred in unlike­ly places unit­ing the cohort.

In this sense, the adapt­abil­i­ty and open­ness of Haya-Baviera’s prac­tice cre­ates the space to har­mo­nize aes­thet­i­cal­ly while tra­vers­ing the artist’s spe­cif­ic inter­ests. For exam­ple, along­side this ongo­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of tourism, trav­el and con­sumerism, there is the per­for­mance and arti­fice inher­ent in host­ing tourists, which is some­thing that Haya-Baviera has played with in Choose Your Own Adven­ture in Whit­ley Bay, a pub­lic dig­i­tal art­work com­mis­sioned by Art­Hous­es and accessed via Wifi hotspot. From a reassess­ment and cri­tique of the desire for ​‘self-suf­fi­cien­cy’ in ​‘par­adise’, pick­ing apart these con­cepts through re-pre­sen­ta­tion and jux­ta­po­si­tion, Haya-Baviera is cur­rent­ly inter­est­ed in desire itself, and in par­tic­u­lar the ten­sion between a neces­si­ty for eth­i­cal cri­tique and the inher­ent dan­ger of polic­ing desire. Hol­i­day adver­tise­ments and tourism in gen­er­al con­tin­ue to pro­vide rich ground for this explo­ration where­by avail­abil­i­ty, sex­u­al or oth­er­wise, is yoked to con­sumer happiness.

The peri­od of research also led to the real­i­sa­tion of the video work Wish You Were Here. The research took the form of a study of hol­i­day brochures and post­card dat­ing from 1970 to 2000. I also stud­ied hun­dreds of exam­ples of reviews left by tourists on Tri­pAd­vi­sor. With this mate­r­i­al, I com­posed a nar­rat­ed slideshow of post­card imagery. Wish You Were Here, made dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, when long-dis­tance trav­el was com­pro­mised, instilled a tan­ta­lis­ing dose of escapism while it also exposed the con­ven­tion­al tourist gaze and the rela­tion­ship between tourism and colonialism.

Relics of D0>.

This col­lec­tion was cre­at­ed for Plat­form 20: Heavy water exhi­bi­tion at Site Gallery in 2021. 

The ceram­ic works were cre­at­ed fol­low­ing my peri­od of research the Wel­beck Estate in Not­ting­hamshire. Some of the arte­facts came direct­ly from this col­lec­tion. Oth­ers were items which expand­ed this col­lec­tion and formed the relics D0>. 

This process rep­re­sent­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion into the evo­lu­tion of myth and rit­u­al. Objects in iso­la­tion become oth­er to them­selves through cura­tion, con­tex­tu­al dis­play and the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the unseen hand of the archivist of the col­lec­tor and what they choose to reveal. 

We believe there to be an hon­esty in the object; believ­ing with our eyes that we can hold it in our hands and its weight will sig­ni­fy its truth. Yet insert­ed into a cul­tur­al con­tin­u­um, real or invent­ed, it los­es itself and re-emerges from skeins of mean­ing, of sig­ni­fiers and our own super­im­posed emo­tion­al and cul­tur­al his­to­ries in a kind of cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy. Where once the object was sol­id, it now flick­ers and vac­il­lates between nar­ra­tives and mytholo­gies, between assumed knowl­edge and uncer­tain­ty, so this once sol­id thing becomes motile and sub­vert­ed and the glass which sep­a­rates us enables no retrieval of cer­tain­ty through touch. 

There is an almost visu­al ono­matopoeia (which of course is a con­tra­dic­tion in itself) in the Relics of D0>. In which rocks and objects sit still in the held breath of the dis­play case, but their lava like appear­ance makes one imag­ine an almost imper­cep­ti­ble move­ment, so that in time one would turn back to find them pud­dled in the base of the case. Hold­ing form, los­ing form, his­to­ries rise and dis­solve. Objects emerge sly­ly, hold­ing their half truths about them.