Episode 3

Edition of 3 + 2 AP

Diptych. Dimensions: 204cm x 116cm
Archival pigment print, custom glass panels with cutouts, window frames, stickers

EPISODE SYNOPSIS

From their gold-detailed Kassa, or box office, two employees sell tickets for a VOC swing ship attraction named Achilles. While visually separated from each other, they might be in the same boat. However, in this diptych, the play with pairs highlight inequality: the man and the girl, the cat and the fish, the oppressor and the oppressed, the past and the present.

The map unfolds a journey through time where the Achilles sails from the Orient into a theme park. As the allegory’s title implies, Episode 3 points at the Achilles heel of Dutch history. It is an indictment against the Disneyfication of the Dutch colonial past: the transformation of an unsettling history - marked by slavery, oppression and exploitation - into a sanitized and pleasant story that continues to feed a national sense of pride. Once again, to make a profit?

VIVARIUM

Vivarium is an ongoing series of constructed dioramas, called Episodes. With his socially engaged tableaux Hardy studies the complexity and coherence of today’s pressing issues. In the creation of these worlds Hardy fuses his imagination, observations, personal memories and true events. Every Episode has its own topic, such as conspiracy thinking (Episode 11), modern working conditions (Episode 9, Free Delivery), racial profiling (Episode 6, On Guard) and gender roles (Episode 4 and 5, Cinema Il Sogno).

Vivarium is an ongoing project, started in 2018. Every world you see once existed in Hardy’s studio. For each Episode, he meticulously designs, builds and photographs a new world. Hardy creates meaningful narratives through the use of characters, objects and their composition. The final works are full of detail and displayed life-size - one-to-one - in a window frame, sparking a direct encounter between the viewer and subject. 

It takes 3 to 4 months to complete a tableau. By addressing a different topic in each Episode while applying a consistent working method, Vivarium is an expanding multiverse of portals where life takes place.

In addition, Vivarium Self-Portraits provide a glimpse into Hardy’s constructed worlds and working-method. They are rooted in his urge to understand and empathize with his characters.