Willkommen Assumption: Or the Private Propertylessness and Pals Willkommen Assumption: Or the Private Propertylessness and Pals

Located in the female section of a hammam that is usually gender-segregated, Stephen G. Rhodes’s contribution to the Istanbul Biennial, Sweethaven Assumption, is an energetic, macabre and at times irreverent installation commenting on the human forces that are shortening our fragile timeline on earth. The many-layered work draws from recent instances in which humans have shown themselves capable of causing widespread destruction and pain – including ‘fracking’, the refugee crisis, the rise of the populist right in Germany, and fractious political polarisation worldwide – as well as their capacity to dissemble and cover-up such processes.

Entering a tent – an icon of itinerancy and fragile shelter – the viewer proceeds into an installation that unites two real places with several imaginary ones. The project begins with architectural and prop details drawn from the Robert Altman film Popeye (1980), set in the fictional coastal town of Sweethaven, but filmed on the real Mediterranean island of Malta, which has experienced significant refugee transfer during the ongoing European migrant crisis. Rhodes elides these details with the architecture of shanty houses in areas of poverty or political turmoil, while incorporating building remnants sourced from Istanbul itself. These are combined with images of houses abandoned after the destructive practices of the oil industry caused a dangerous sinkhole to occur in Assumption Parish, Louisiana, where an area of land the size of a sports field is disappearing every hour.

Employing historical material, recent politics and pop-cultural iconography, Rhodes uses invective and dark humour to comment on our potential to corrupt and destroy ourselves through our processes of asserting control over the world.