PRESS RELEASE 2022.10, 19

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Wendelien van Oldenborgh

unset on-set
Saturday, 12 November 2022 ― Sunday, 19 February 2023
unset on-set is the first solo presentation in Japan of the Dutch artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh. In an
artistic practice now spanning more than twenty years, van Oldenborgh has been exploring cinema as
both form and a method of production that enables collective dialogue. People of various backgrounds
participate in her filmmaking as cast and crew members, never with prewritten scripts, often (re)visiting
and conversing on artistic and cultural practices, or sociopolitical events of the past or present. In thisway, the works capture myriad subjectivities, perspectives, and relations, surfacing various issues thatresonate in the present.
The exhibition presents five existing works and a new work. Among the earlier works are Maurits Script(2006), in which archival documents of Johan Maurits, the governor of seventeenth-century Dutch Brazil,
are recited and discussed among individuals with various backgrounds living in Dutch society, and No

False Echoes (2008), which captures various forms of dialogue regarding the cultural and political
implications of early radio under Dutch colonial policy, intertwined with a voice reading aloud “If I Were aDutchman,” written by the Indonesian nationalist Soewardi Soerjaningrat. Maurits Script was filmed at
the Mauritshuis Museum, Maurits’s former residence in the Hague, and No False Echoes was filmed at
the former radio station that delivered programs to the Dutch East Indies. As such, the film locations offer
specific historical contexts to the dialogue and the imagery, mediating—yet not encapsulating—thearticulation.

1. Maurits Script, 2006, film still

2. No False Echoes, 2008, film still

Van Oldenborgh’s filmmaking also often integrates music, film, poetry, and their histories. Two Stones(2019) features the German architect Lotte Stam-Beese and the Afro-Caribbean political activist Hermina
Huiswoud, both of whom absorbed socialist ideology in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s and later lived
in the Netherlands to pursue their political ideals and struggles. Filmed in two locations―Rotterdam, theContact：Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Public Relations Kudo / Inaba / Uchibori
TEL：03-5245-1134
E-MAIL：mot-pr@mot-art.jp

URL：https://www.mot-art-museum.jp*All programs are subject to change.

Netherlands, and Kharkiv, Ukraine―with a group of architects, artists, and residents of housing projects
planned by Stam-Beese, the work unravels the two women’s ideals and various dissonances through thedialogue.

3. Two Stones, 2019, film still

4. Two Stones, 2019, film still

Many of van Oldenborgh’s works address women’s issues in various ways, as for instance in the recentobsada (2021), whose title means “cast” in Polish. Consisting of footage taken by a group of women
involved in the Polish film industry, it captures their open conversations on how patriarchal power, which
the earlier Polish avant-garde movement failed to recognize and still persists today, deeply influences
their subjectivities and aspirations in the cultural field. In Hier. (2021) (Dutch for “here”), members of ayoung all-female band and two female writers living in the Netherlands weave out a delicate interplay of
their emotional realities, memories, and political reflections on colonial history, race, gender, andsexuality inside the under-renovation Museum Arnhem, a former gentlemen’s club for Indo-Dutch men.

5. Hier., 2021, film still

6. obsada, 2021, set photography by Jakub Danilewicz

The new work in the show was filmed in Tokyo and Yokohama and casts light on two female Japanesewriters, Fumiko Hayashi and Yuriko Miyamoto, both active from the early twentieth century until theimmediate postwar period. The power and contradictions in both these women’s words reverberate indialogues and images of an intergenerational cast moving through various spaces of knowledge, memory,and culture, reflecting today’s struggles around gender, politics, and love.
Van Oldenborgh will create a site-specific setting for viewing the film works as well as for communication,
Contact：Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Public Relations Kudo / Inaba / Uchibori
TEL：03-5245-1134
E-MAIL：mot-pr@mot-art.jp

URL：https://www.mot-art-museum.jp*All programs are subject to change.

so as to facilitate intersections among the works, the audience’s bodies, their gazes, and their voices—intersections that complicate and critique normalized frames for understanding identity, discourse, andpower.

Wendelien van Oldenborgh | Profile
Born 1962 in Rotterdam, currently lives and works in Berlin. Van Oldenborgh develops works, whereby thecinematic format is used as a methodology for production and as the basic language for various forms ofpresentation, collaborating with participants in different scenarios, to co-produce the script. Her recent
solo exhibitions include work, work, work (work) at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (Poland, 2021), tono lengua

boca at Fabra i Coats (Barcelona 2020) and CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Madrid, 2019-2021), andCinema Olanda at the 57th Venice Biennale Dutch Pavilion (Venice, 2017). She has also exhibited innumerous international group shows, including Sonsbeek 20->24 (Arnhem, 2021), Chicago Architecture
Biennial (Chicago, 2019), bauhaus imaginista at the House of World Cultures (Berlin, 2019), Singapore
Biennial (Singapore, 2019), Aichi Triennial (Aichi, 2016), and Kyiv Biennial (Ukraine, 2015).

Related events
Gallery talks, book readings, and other related programs will be held during the exhibition. Details
regarding participation will be posted on the museum's website on a later date.

InformationExhibition Period

Saturday, 12 November 2022 ― Sunday, 19 February 2023

Open Hours

10:00－18:00（Tickets available until 30 minutes before closing. ）ClosedMondays (except 2 and 9 January), 28 December－1 January, 10 January

Venue

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Exhibition Gallery 3F

Admission

General－1,300 yen / University & College Students, Over 65－900 yen /High School & Junior High School Students－500 yen /Elementary School Students & Younger－Free*The exhibition MOT Collection is also available for viewing with this ticket.

Organized by

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo operated by Tokyo Metropolitan Foundationfor History and Culture

Contact050-5541-8600（Hello Dial）

Welcome Back Ticket
Visitors who wish to revisit the exhibition can receive a Welcome Back Ticket in exchange with apurchased ticket (valid one-time only). Please ask our staff in the gallery.

Concurrent Exhibitions
Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams (21 December 2022－28 May 2023)
Collection Exhibition MOT Collection Rewinding the Collection 2nd（3 November 2022－19 February 2023）

Contact：Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Public Relations Kudo / Inaba / Uchibori
TEL：03-5245-1134
E-MAIL：mot-pr@mot-art.jp

URL：https://www.mot-art-museum.jp*All programs are subject to change.

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1

Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Maurits Script, 2006, film still

2

Wendelien van Oldenborgh, No False Echoes, 2008, film still

3, ４Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Two Stones, 2019, film still

５Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Hier., 2021, film still

６Wendelien van Oldenborgh, obsada, 2021, set photography by Jakub Danilewicz

Contact：Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Public Relations Kudo / Inaba / Uchibori
TEL：03-5245-1134
E-MAIL：mot-pr@mot-art.jp

URL：https://www.mot-art-museum.jp*All programs are subject to change.