On December 8, 1990 the Witte de With opened Ken Lum. This retrospective exhibition (co-produced with the Winnipeg Art Gallery) included an outdoor photo-mural of Lum's Melly Shum Hates Her Job (1990), which I first saw ten years later, with all the urban grit the city of Rotterdam could muster.
A couple weeks ago this came:
The circular centre of the invite detaches (I am already using it as a coaster) to suggest institutional transparency, a portal through which to look anew at a museum that has dropped its colonial name (Witte de With was a 17th century Dutch admiral and plunderer) for one derived from Lum's mural. Hence the Kunstinstituut Melly.
In this spirit of openness, reproductions of Lum's photo-text have opened up as well, removing Melly's face for a view towards the institute's future. An interesting decision (Melly's face is erased for a view to that which she is attached), one I assume the artist (and his subject?) endorsed.
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