Minne Kersten

Where I'm calling from

In a dimly lit room, there is a projection onto a wall, overlapping onto an oval mirror.

In a dimly lit room, there is furniture including a chair. a bookcase stacked with books, and on the floor there is a lamp covered in a thin fabric.

A triangular wooden structure in a open room with brick walls. Inside, there is light, and a bed can be seen.

In the corner of a dark room, a chair is piled with clothing. Next to it on the ground is a mirror.

The corner of a dimly lit room. There are two chairs upturned and stack on each other, a wooden cabinet and a wardrobe, along with books and photographs.

Three individual images positioned vertically. The top image show a white walls with a lamp, a shelf and a door. The centre image has a grainy texture and shows a bedroom space, and the bottom image focusses on a shelf unit which contains clothing, books, and toiletries.

A bedroom space with white walls filled with a bed, a computer chair and storage furniture. On the floors sits open books and cables.

A bedroom which is partially submerged under water. Items including shoes, and a bicycle helmet float on the surface of the water.

A room with white walls and floors and large windows with natural light streaming in. At the centre of the room is an art installation of a home space featuring a storage furniture and a partially obscured armchair.

A room large room with wooden floors. In the centre is a large screen with a black speaker on either side. On the screen is an image of a bedroom partially submerged under water.

Where I'm calling from was an exhibition of new work by Netherlands-based artist Minne Kersten. Working with the architecture of David Dale Gallery, Minne constructed a detailed and evocative environment exploring the narrative capacity of inanimate objects, and their role in triggering memory in a transportative way. Minne takes a literary approach to her work, blending installation, video, sculpture and drawing to craft the backdrop of a fictional world. Through her immersive installations, she reveals buildings to be receptive to stories and traumas, as she stages situations subjected to chaos, decay, and deconstruction.

Minne explores the traces of events left behind and exposes them as witnesses of private stories retained by the walls that surround us. Her work considers the relationship between the real and imagined, the ordinary and the uncanny, and poses questions about memory and its reconstruction. Working across a range of media, she interweaves personal themes such as mourning, loss and memory with the collective domain of fiction, fables, and symbols.