Beauty and the Right to the Ugly was a cinematic experiment set in Het Karregat, a multifunctional community centre in Eindhoven designed by Frank Van Klingeren, which sought to propitiate communal forms of habitation. Wendelien van Oldenborgh's film examined the ambition –and failure– of utopian architecture, while conceiving and implementing a filming methodology that translates architecture premises such as 'open', 'user-led' and 'participative' into cinematic devices.

Half-way between directing the participants, and letting them take the lead, the work functioned as a performative enactment of the issues it addresses. It is thus a continuation of the artist’s interest on filmmaking as a perfomative device and of her ongoing engagement in discussions on collectiveness, its intersection with the private and the role cultural production plays in this.

Download the exhibition information here

Read about Beauty and the Right to the Ugly in Art Monthly, The List, The Student and The Scotsman.

Beauty and the Right to the Ugly, 2014 was produced in collaboration with Auguste Orts with support from the Mondriaan Fonds Amsterdam and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.