Heidi Voet: 500 Years

“The plastic bag is a vessel for an ever-changing content”

It is predicted that it will take approximately 500 years for a disposable plastic bag to fully decompose. This demarcation of time is a catalyst for Belgian artist, Heidi Voet’s first solo exhibition at BANK. Through flags, figurative sculptures, and masks the plastic bag becomes both the medium and means to explore the past 500 momentous years of human civilization.

Painstakingly weaved out of colored plastic bags and hanging in the main exhibition space are flags of countries that no longer exist. Within the life span of a disposable plastic bag many nation states have formed and collapsed, changed and reconfigured. In a world where the history of war and strife is predicated on nationalism Voet’s colorful flags examine the transient and impermanent nature of this national identity.

The second part of the exhibition is composed of what looks like tribal masks, also made from weaved plastic bags. While the bag acts as a skin around the contents inside and transport items from one place to the next, masks also disguise the wearer’s identity, enabling them to exhibit behaviors outside social conventions. Tribal masks are traditionally used in rites of passage from one state to the another- boyhood to man, life to death- and inevitably refer to Europe’s infamous colonial legacy.

In the third part of the show, Voet presents photographs of different fruits whose skins have been exchanged with others. This funny series, while echoing the skin concept of the bags, relates to the fantasy of longing to be the other, to assimilate, and to fit in with pre-existing norms. Voet also interchanges peels from different fruits as a way to emphasize the destabilizing effects of global trade on the provenance of these fruits. Voet repeatedly positions the plastic bag as a shifting actor in her work. The whimsical quality of the plastic bags is seen throughout Heidi Voet’s earlier work. Voet imbues common, overlooked objects value and meaning - such as cheap digital watches transformed into a carpet, or Chinese magazines folded into floral arrangements- through the simple act of making and playing.

Heidi Voet splits her time between Shanghai and Belgium. Her work is closely linked to the construction of her identity as someone living between two continents and cultures. While her signature language reads far beyond stereotypes associated with the female artist in history, her strength lies in how she takes common objects out of their original context and imbue them a broader meaning and a new identity.