In the book De Indringer, Jean-Luc Nancy describes how he underwent a heart transplant. He tells how the heart of a deceased person, with the help of immunotherapy, has to be accepted by his own body, in the hope that this new organ will save his life. In the text he wonders whether the body has not always been permeable. Has it not always been inhabited by others: bacteria, medicines, viruses, plants? A network of bodies. Can we see a wound as an open window in a house that is inhabited by many? Most people are so used to seeing the body as a closed whole that must be protected from outside forces that they overlook the fact that the skin is actually a membrane. Open to the outside world, whether we like it or not.

Hannah Chris Lomans and Amy Suo Wu started their residency at Plaatsmaken from a similar intimacy. Moving together through slow exercises of walking and breathing, they explored how their bodies can be the starting point for a shared intuitive process of thinking and making.

Their exhibition A wound is the ground on which this body rests focuses on the marking as memory, just as a wound forms a memory on the skin. Together they decided to use corrosive processes to achieve this. Working methods that eat away, open, rot, fade or even destroy the surfaces that carry their texts and images.

Instead of using paper, Hannah wrote their texts on metal. She used materials such as Vaseline to protect the metal plates from the corrosive acid in which they were immersed. The acid ate away at the metal and exposed a different kind of surface, ripping it open and leaving lasting marks. It forms a sharp contrast with the sentences that deal with, among other things, care and touch. Their text uses a physical language that emerges from an awareness of the violent patriarchal systems around us. A world in which there is still no self-evident place for the femme body. The wound created by this system extends beyond the body. It is a wound in the landscape.

Amy used a similar process for the fabrics on which she made her drawings. She worked with chlorine-filled markers to bleach the colours out of the fabrics. She dyed many of the fabrics herself, using materials she had on hand — coffee, tea, and plants from her allotment. The fibres of the fabrics were opened up like pores so that the paint could be applied. Various metal solutions were used to obtain and fix the desired colour. In an organic and abstracted drawing style, she depicted the energies of the heart — both moments of fullness and emptiness. We see, for example, her son’s ‘nibble kiss’, or symbols representing her parental family.

Hannah’s metal pages are attached to Amy’s fabrics with thread, creating an interdependent relationship between the two works. It shows that the two practices were strongly influenced by each other during the residency, not only in form, but in the entire working method and conceptualization of their work.

Everything comes together in a pliable landscape created by the ‘curtains‘. This installation invites the viewer to look at the works from different angles, to touch them or even to walk through them. To experience how the light reveals the fabrics and metal plates differently each time.

In A wound is the ground on which this body rests, the wound is presented as an environment to walk through. A landscape that is sometimes painful, sometimes disturbing, sometimes soothing, sometimes healing, sometimes unbearable, sometimes satisfying, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes inviting. The exhibition shows in a poetic and sensual way that pain does not always have to be avoided as quickly as possible. By letting it rest and taking care of it, it can be a way to understand the world in a different way. 

The invitation to collaborate and explore new forms of publishing form the core of the exhibition series Half Rhyme. How can printing and publishing be used to bring people together to address personal and political issues? Building on the Altered Breath series, this series also includes a three-month residency and an exhibition. The exhibitions focus on forms of collectivity, queerness, repressed stories and care, among other things. The work of all artists and poets is presented in a closing group exhibition and a publication.

Text: curator Es Venema

The exhibition was on view until 18 October 2025

With thanks to Gemeente Arnhem, the Mondriaan Fonds and Lira Fonds