Reflecting on the past Graduation Show in themes, this time: identity
3 februari 2025
In six months' time, the annual Graduation Show will take place again, from 3 to 8 July 2025. In the coming months, we will therefore look back with three works on a specific theme each time. This time: identity.
The graduation works of KABK alums have been featured in the Graduation Catalogue for several years now. In it, they upload their work and indicate which themes apply. Identity is the most common theme. In 2024, 60 works were about identity, among other things, and in 2023 there were 55.
The theme of identity is not explained in advance; it is up to the graduating students themselves how they interpret it. This can be seen in the reach of the works: the work Tingyi Jiang uses 'fitting' as a method to explore societal systems and everyday behaviors. 'Reset your Identity' by Annette Lundkvist has another angle: she uses three alter egos to explore aspects of her identity and environment. Alexander Namrok invites the viewer to reflect on their relationships with their parents and perhaps spark some new conversations along the way. Below, three completely different works are highlighted, with the theme of identity as the common denominator.
Make It Fit by Tingyi Jiang (Bachelor ArtScience, 2024)
Make It Fit is a performance, functioning as speech, manifesto, poetry, concert, and ritual. It constructs a theatrical situation through the precise composition of spoken words, live instruments, scenography, and meticulous mechanical enactments. The phrase “Make It Fit” recurs throughout the performance in varying contexts and rhythms. Appropriating the language of propaganda by grotesque chanting, stating disassembling, contextualising, and repeating, language becomes the in-between of sound and sense, signal and noise, narrative and poetry. The impossibility of perfect execution of ‘script’ introduces awkwardness and humor, creating absurdity within the solemn scenario. The self behind the authoritative character gradually emerges, revealing vulnerability beneath the rigorous apparatus and personal memories shaped by collective consensus.
Make It Fit explores the performances and performativity of both individuals and authorities within the context of social norms, and examines how these normalized social actions and artistic performances interact. This simple and general yet abstract phrase generates the fictional ideology of “Make It Fit-ism.” It provokes diverse questions: What is fit? How to fit? Why fit? And what types of language and voices can be widely heard in the current society?
Make It Fit addresses political urgencies, institutional critique and identity politics. While we search for a 'fitting' way to escape the confines of 'fitting in,’ we also yearn for the security and comfort that ‘fitting’ brings.
This piece fits awkwardly and harmoniously in the most beautiful meeting room of KABK.
View the work in the Graduation Catalogue.
Reset your Identity by Anette Lundkvist (Bachelor Fine Arts, 2024)
Within my artistic practice I embrace my concept of using three different alter egos as a method of exploring different aspects of my identity, environment, encounters with other people, animals, nature and alternative dimensions.
The preservation and archiving of history documents, personal heritage, photos, art literature, history books and assemblages has become a significant growing component of my artistic practice. I observe that our history is being rewritten without us being asked.
I seek authenticity and the soul in found objects that I bring from the outer world to my inner world. I like to combine colors, materials and diffrent techniques. It takes the form of portraits, paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, fiction and collage.
View the work in the Graduation Catalogue.
The place we go to fight is where we learn to love by Alexander Namrok (Bachelor Photography, 2024)
When I was a teenager, my father opened his own self-defense gym. With a background in Krav Maga from his time in the French army, he was eager to pass on his skills to others. Soon after the gym’s opening, I began attending.
Like many boys growing up with their fathers on the periphery, we didn’t talk much about feelings. Instead, the gym became a sanctuary, allowing us to connect as father and son. He thought it was his responsibility as a father to teach his son how to defend himself. Here, our bodies communicated, conveying what words often couldn’t. Lessons were imparted through repetition, passing knowledge from one generation to the next.
My aim is to bring my medium and practice of photography into my father’s arena: the dojo. As a way to reconnect with him by staging our relationship for the lens within the place where we learned to love through embodiment.
As the project unfolded, not knowing exactly where it was going, I started noticing a change. Through these staged movements and interviews with my father, it laid the foundation of a newfound connection and, by effect, a newfound empathy between us. The creative sphere we created allowed for us to reconnect without judgment.
Here, our worlds collided and combined, and the more our bodies performed for the camera, I became confronted with the fact that the time my father and I have together is limited, precious, and should be cherished. The project is not only about the two of us but acts as an invitation for the viewer to reflect on their own relationships with their parents and perhaps may spark some new conversations along the way.
View the work in the Graduation Catalogue.