Meno Priezvisko
Meno Priezvisko
Meno Priezvisko
TOMÁŠ MORAVANSKÝ
HUMBLEBRAG
Gallery project, interactive, object, sound, various dimension
15.12. - 9.1. 2022
OFF/FORMAT Gallery, Brno, CZ
Artist: Tomáš Moravanský
Curator: Tomáš Moravanský & Jan Gerych
Technical support: Adam Turzo, Michal Mitro
The Humblebrag exhibit is a distorted representation of a museum display of a college „safe space,“ including its fictional character, Humblebrag the dwarf. It removes the real object of the resting bench from the space of the Faculty of Fine Arts campus - which is literally only two hundred metres away from the gallery itself. The environment, mimicking its „original setting“ of green grass with garbage, resembles an open-air museum. The statuette of the deformed dwarf repeats overheard fragments of the students‘ speeches, shaped by its own logic into stories, questions about its limited world, and its own ontology, which is reflected in its physiognomy.
The dwarf only comes to life and speaks at night when no one is around - technically speaking - when no one in the gallery is moving, because the light is triggered when motion is detected - much like some garden lights. You can hear it from a distance or, for example, wait motionless behind a pillar as if you were watching some sort of wild animal. But basically it talks all night alone, or when the gallery is empty.
„I‘m not woke enough“ he mutters angrily, or „this isn‘t right, I shouldn‘t be out here, I should be at school, on the other side of the ocean“ he quotes Greta Thunberg‘s words as his/her/its own thoughts. Meanwhile, as he surreptitiously eats forgotten potato chips or rummages around in the dark in a garbage bag, he sings Maddonna‘s „Vogue“ or Beyonce‘s „If I Were a Boy“ while willing everyone to dance. It‘s like catching a lonely kid dancing in front of a mirror or that the dwarf is having a meltdown.
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