Part III: On re-evaluating value

Part III: On re-evaluating value

The Day it Rains Jellyfish
Part III: Re-evaluating Value
Text my Sister x Albert van Abbehuis
May 14 – June 21 2026

Opening event: May 14 – 19:00 | dj sets TBA
Location: Albert van Abbehuis, Bilderdijklaan 19, 5611 NG Eindhoven
General visiting: Thursday – Sunday, 13:00 – 17:00

For a story to be heard, it needs to be told. Who is permitted to tell stories, who feels empowered enough to take the stage to do so and who we trust to tell the ‘true’ story is closely related to their perceived social status. It is through storytelling that there is a power attributed to the teller of the story; they yield the power to define the things, people and events they speak about. It is through the narrative generated by these stories that our perception of the object of the story can be altered. It is through the marginalization of people that we in turn also marginalize voices and knowledges, reserving our understanding of truth to a singular Western scientific understanding.

The Day it Rains Jellyfish Part III: On re-evaluating value investigates the assignment of social and political value to human beings, and questions its relation to the power hierarchy that is embedded within knowledge production, story telling and truth-building. To go towards a different understanding of value, we need to overthrow the values that are installed upon us by dominant culture and undermine the patterns that shape our understanding of value. Power influences the ways in which we perceive the truth through allowing only those with the most privileged identity to become tellers of truth while rejecting the proposition of alternative stories. By contesting this monopoly in truth-telling, the exhibition proposes to re-assign value as a form of solidarity. 

The artists in this exhibition (re-)tell stories about immigration, exotification, classism, colonialism and the rise of far-right politics, in an attempt to undermine the politics of knowledge production that are based on unjust hierarchies within social value. They look at value structures that are both based on real-life tendencies and imagined worlds that are rooted in the patterns of the collective current and past.  On re-evaluating value stands for tearing down oppressive systems and rebuilding our perception of each other and the world, though promoting pluriform storytelling and knowledge production.

 

This exhibition is part of the trilogy The Day it Rains Jellyfish, which looks into the generative possibilities of conspiracy. Through three exhibitions we approach and define conspiracy as an undermining act that seeks to counter dominant narratives and the idea of a singular ‘objective truth’. Simultaneously, The Day it Rains Jellyfish is an inquiry towards the power mechanisms behind these modes of truth-building. When we choose to live in the safeness of the supposed general truth, and conform to the idea of a singularity in truth, it is easy to frown upon the proposal of alternatives. This trilogy gradually builds towards a different understanding of truth. One that is based on a non-binary approach of truth, one that goes beyond labeling things as being only true or false. We build towards a truth that is rooted in multiplicity and accepts that one truth does not have to terminate the other. Part I and Part II respectively took place at Light-harvesting Complex (Vantaa, Finland) and Industra gallery (Brno, Czech Republic).

 

Participating artists: Marcos Kueh, Stijn Peeters, Moe Mustafa, Jakub Jansa, gabi dao

 

Curated by: Julia Fidder & Xenia Tsompanidou

 

With the support of: Taike Art Promotion Center Finland, Cultuur Fonds Noord-Brabant

 

Albert van Abbehuis website

 

Van Abbehuis, Eindhoven (NL)
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