GAMES NIGHT: Johannesburg
Johannesburg, 2023GAMES NIGHT – JOHANNESBURG is the first iteration of an exhibition marking the culmination of a 3-month solo residency with Bubblegum Gallery and the start of a longer term experiment.
“Here, the audience — and their subjective memories and experiences of love, desire, intimacy, and sex — become a companion in its making.”
The settinG
Detouring from the traditional gallery setup, GAMES NIGHT is set in an apartment in Johannesburg’s Hallmark House Hotel.
Partly-furnished to simulate what we imagine to be a friend’s new apartment, the space is set up for an evening with good company: sunset, snacks, drinks, a weekend playlist and familiar games like 30 Seconds, Jenga and UNO are in good supply.
Everything – from the food to the decor to the sounds of a wistful playlist– is an invitation to those anywhere between their first existential crisis and last heartbreak to make themselves at home. In this way, the home itself is the first installation.
WhY DO WE SET OUT TO LOVE the way we DO? To what end? AT WHAT COST?
In GAMES NIGHT, we’re invited to examine the scripts that teach us about relationships – those given to us largely through pop-culture, and we’re called to interrogate the role of these scripts in the games we tend to play with each other in pursuit of all things love, power, and belonging.
To do this, GAMES NIGHT stays true to its name. Here, we come to play. In the form of a guided experience, we play three games: TRUTH OR TRUTH™, 7 MINUTES IN HEAVEN, and PICTIONARISH.
GAMING ‘THE GAME’
Each game is an installation of a body of work produced to speak to the broader theme of love, power and the social scripts that govern them.
And each installation invites guests to do more than look – but to touch, play and reconfigure the bodies of work in order to play the game.
Truth or Truth™ – Installation 1
TRUTH OR TRUTH™ is a take on contemporary ‘get-to-know-you’ games like Truth or Dare, 21 Questions, and that New York Times viral essay: 36 Questions to Make Anyone Fall in Love With You.
This version of the game is split into two parts.
Part One: Pick your truth
To begin, guests are asked to answer 16 multiple-choice questions by physically flipping between 16 double-sided artworks.
Each guest receives a worksheet containing the questions and a table to record their responses: a red dot for TRUTH, corresponding to the red side of each artwork, and a blue dot for TRUTH™, corresponding to the blue side of each piece.
What type of truth each side represents – that’s up for debate.
Which part of yourself do you want to be perceived – and why?
THAT’S the underlying question.
In navigating this game, we’re nudged to learn more about ourselves and the ones we’re with, but we might find ourselves asking what exactly we’re playing for even when we think we’re just having fun.
Part two: your shade of truth
After completing their questionnaire with the TRUTH OR TRUTH™ installation, guests then get their responses ‘processed’.
In a lab-like setup, drops of blue and red corresponding to each guest’s number of blue and red responses are mixed into a small vial, yielding what should be a unique shade of purple — a personal ‘truth serum’ of sorts.
Player, or played? HONEST, OR?
The message in the bottle serves as evidence: reminding us that we are far more nuanced than these games may allow us to be.
7 Minutes in He(ll)ven – Installation 2
It’s in pursuit of a break from the buzz of GAMES NIGHT that we find ourselves in the bedroom.
Here we find a version of the teenage game of ‘7 Minutes in Heaven’ – only this one takes the form of a video capturing some of the dominant representations of romantic love Hollywood teaches us from the time we’re Disney-years old, and continues to reinforce as ‘the classics’.
“Percolating beneath the work’s material surface is a turning towards what is difficult.
The video ends with an extended axiom from an artwork titled What Would Jenny Say, from the TRUTH OR TRUTH™ series, which is both a nod to Jenny Holzer’s own Truisms, and a public call to reflection.
PICTIONARish – Installation 3
Playing on the old guessing game of Pictionary, guests have a solo reprieve here: the chance to explore a series of abstract, mixed-media works and simply describe what they see on the worksheet provided.
These handwritten text and paint-based works are hung throughout the apartment – inviting viewers to play more passively over a drink, a chat, or a game of cards.
The result is a counterpoint to the potential emotional intensity of TRUTH OR TRUTH™, allowing guests to negotiate the degree to which they engage with each piece and to name what they see.
“It is in this space—from the syntax imparted through, and by these scripts and from memories lingering beneath the skin’s surface—that GAMES NIGHT takes shape.”
GAMES NIGHT – JOHANNESBURG ran from 1 – 30 April 2023 with the generous support of Bubblegum Gallery, Hallmark House Hotel, and Leap Initiative Philanthropies.