The work of Ansuya Blom runs like a common thread through Landhuis Oud Amelisweerd

Landhuis Oud Amelisweerd is located on the Kromme Rijn in Bunnik, a stone’s throw from Utrecht. A beautiful country estate where the Centraal Museum organizes exhibitions of contemporary art. Ansuya Blom (1956) is the fifth artist in the series. Blom lives and works in Amsterdam and is associated with the Rijksakademie there as an advisor.

Oud Amelisweerd was built in 1770 as a summer house and has a rich history of owners, but little has been modernized over the years. That is why the interior has remained largely unchanged. You step back in time. On the first floor there is Chinese and Dutch wallpaper from the 18th and 19th centuries. On the first floor, thin linen wall coverings have been applied in most rooms over remnants of older wallpaper.

Such a beautiful country house may be a rewarding environment for contemporary art, but things can also go wrong. During the previous exhibition, with work by Han Schuil, the paintings were hung on temporary partitions that were free in the space. The visual spectacle of Schuil’s work formed a difficult combination with the historic environment, also because it was far too crowded.

Organ meat in bags

Ansuya Blom takes a different approach. In any case, the artist did not want to compete with the beautiful surroundings, she says in an introductory video: “I didn’t come out quite right.” She decided to ignore the context of the house and the view of the surrounding park, so to speak. A smart move, because paradoxically it brings the house back into the story.

Blom made a continuous presentation, which starts in the first room with a kind of low table with drawings. The table and drawings continue in the second room and then appear to follow a route through the following rooms. It’s as if a line has been drawn across the map.

The work runs like a common thread through the building. That work itself is a common thread in Blom’s oeuvre. It started in 1987, when they made the movie Ysabel’s Table Dance made. A woman places pieces of organ meat – brain, heart, liver, kidneys – in cotton bags that she then ties on her body, exactly where the organs in question are located. The work was about contradictions, between inside and outside, between hidden and visible.

Not long afterwards, Blom made a drawing based on a still from that film. That drawing became the beginning of a series that continues to this day and which is entitled …that dieser Mensch… has. The basis for this series of drawings and collages is a human silhouette, over which Blom continually draws or paints. Sometimes the figure is present as an outline, sometimes it falls apart, sometimes it is hidden behind spots or organs.

Medical illustrations

In Oud Amelisweerd, the drawings are placed on the table construction, which runs through the halls, on sheets of paper that are completely marked with graphite. Occasionally an edge is left white, but almost the entire surface of the tables is drawn obsessively densely. Here and there, transparent sheets have also been placed on the tables on which red lines have been drawn, reminiscent of medical illustrations of cells or blood vessels.

The dim light makes it not always easy to view the drawings; you have to take some time for it. It then becomes apparent that the works are subtly constructed from several layers. It’s as if Blom is looking for some kind of secret. The book that appears simultaneously with the exhibition is called Below the Undergroundalso a reference that she wants to dig deeper than the surface, that she wants to uncover underlying meanings.

There is another story running through the exhibition. The title …that dieser Mensch… comes from the report of a medical researcher who delved into the fate of Kaspar Hauser (1812-1833). On May 26, 1828, a boy appeared in Nuremberg who could barely speak. He had a note with him saying that he had learned to read and write, but that he had never been outside. He is said to have grown up in semi-darkness and to have eaten poorly.

A medical researcher wrote that Kaspar Hauser – dieser Mensch – is not mad or stupid, ‘but has clearly been forcibly removed from all human and social education in the most hopeless way, brought up as a half-savage, cannot be persuaded to eat decent food, but lives only on black bread and water ‘.

Psychoanalysis

What are you if you grow up without an environment, disconnected from reality, Blom asks himself in these works. What makes a person a person at all? Her interest in psychiatry led her to pursue a master’s degree in psychoanalysis in 2001.

The drawings are small and delicate, which contrasts with the works in the corner rooms of the exhibition. Three of Blom’s films will be shown there on large video screens. Misty Man (2024) is about a man accused of theft and brings together different times and locations. A river with pelicans in Paramaribo, 8mm recordings from Aruba, seagulls in Amsterdam, a letter read from a book by Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault, a voice whispering a Native American battle song; the film shows great ambitions, but ultimately lacks a coherent story.

It is more hypothermic and more concentrated Hither Come Down on Me (2007), in which the camera follows a man nervously preparing to leave his house. Once again we see a fascination for people who fall outside the boat, for voices on the margins. The man picks lint from his suit and nervously scans the door. Once outside, the city presents itself as an anonymous, shadowy environment where all is not well. The man encourages himself while numbers run through his head.

Ansuya Blom, SoloCountry house Oud Amelisweerd, Bunnik, until June 30.