Looped video installation, 2004

Filmed underwater in a public swimming pool, Positions shows a single elegant swimming gesture, rotated and looped above the viewer’s head. At first it reads as a serene, almost weightless image. Only gradually does the viewer notice missing limbs and scars — traces of war and disability that quietly disturb the initial impression of harmony.

The work was inspired by the artist’s experience swimming alongside a group of disabled people — many of them war survivors. By rotating the underwater footage and projecting it high above eye level, the installation turned the gallery into an abstract pool.

The viewer looks up, admiring the beauty of the gesture, before recognising the absence of limbs. This delay between perception and recognition is crucial: it exposes how easily institutions aestheticise bodies while keeping certain people outside their doors.

Positions is part of a larger cycle that includes the ramp installation The Loop / For the Status, which later provided physical access to the gallery space and symbolically re-opened it to those who had been excluded.

The Standard — Preachiness overpowers poetry