ANTWERP.- For nearly two decades, Anthea Hamilton has developed a complex practice that spans sculpture, installation, film and performance. Hamilton dives without restraint into the meandering history of visual and cultural production, using her eye as a both subjective and productive lens through which to view (and recreate) the world. Her installations —which combine unexpected materials, scale and humour— propose an alternative and fragmented reality where gender roles, sexualities, food, domestic life, nature, and the traditions of different cultures, all rescind their status of firmly established clichés and become fluid notions. Hamilton’s practice therefore relies on a strong belief in cohabitation, complexity and, by extension, imagination, positing the artworks’ ontological ambiguity as a means to constantly challenge our perceived realities.

Using the ‘mash up’ as her method, she masterfully filters and assesses elements culled from the present and recent past of fashion, art, food, nature, design, architecture and pop culture. She then resituates what we might otherwise consider familiar or comforting tropes and motifs in a continuous bid to sidestep obvious and hegemonic meanings.

Influenced by the early 20th century French writer and dramatist Antonin Artaud and his call for the ‘physical knowledge of images’, Hamilton aims to elicit a bodily response to an idea or an image when we encounter her works. The artist is best known for creating compelling and immersive large-scale statement pieces in which bodies, images, materials and spaces perform under the terms and conditions of a particular frame.




Mash Up seeks to consolidate Hamilton’s artistic language and further establish the artist’s idiosyncratic voice. Its aim is to draw a comprehensive and precise picture of a practice characterised by devotional creativity, unexpected research trajectories, highly visual aesthetics, cross cultural interests, and interdisciplinary modes of production. Visitors are confronted by an exhibition of strong visual impact, inhabited by performative spaces and physical manifestations of images. Hamilton’s exhibition invites us to think about the knowledge of forms and images, and raises relevant questions on representation, identity politics, and methodologies of freedom.

The exhibition at M HKA is the first opportunity to share an in-depth reading and articulation of Hamilton’s practice, whilst also opening up new perspectives and interpretations. Mash Up comprises no less than 70 works created by the artist throughout her career, alongside a series of new works, performances and exhibition-specific situations. Across 1800 square metres of exhibition space, existing works are staged alongside both new commissions and ways of looking at iconic past installations such as The Squash (Tate Britain, 2018), The New Life (Venice Biennale, 2019, and Secession, 2018), and Lichen! Libido! Chastity! (Turner Prize, 2016 and SculptureCenter, 2015). The exhibition testifies to the collaborative dynamic inherent to Hamilton’s practice by featuring co-creations with and affiliations to (amongst others): artist Nicholas Byrne, architect and designer Gaetano Pesce, gardener and writer Roger Phillips, performer Carlos Maria Romera, photographer Lewis Ronald, and LOEWE fashion house as directed by designer Jonathan Anderson.

Curator: Anne-Claire Schmitz

Mash Up is on view at M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp from 18 February – 15 May 2022.

Anthea Hamilton is a visual artist working across installation, sculpture, film and performance. She completed her studies at the painting departments of Leeds Metropolitan University and the Royal College of Art London in 2000 and 2005 respectively. In 2016, Hamilton was one of four shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize presented at Tate Britain. Anthea Hamilton lives and works in London and is currently a guest tutor at the free, independent art school Open School East, in Margate (UK). Anthea Hamilton has exhibited her work internationally. Selected solo exhibitions include: The Prude, Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2019); The New Life, Secession, Vienna (2018); A is for... and, am, anxious, adore, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan (2018); The Squash, Tate Britain, London (2018); Love IV (with Nicholas Byrne), Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2016); Anthea Hamilton Reimagines Kettle’s Yard, Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, (2016); Lichen! Libido! Chastity!, SculptureCenter, New York (2015); Kabuki, The Tanks, Tate Modern, London (2012); Sorry I’m Late, Firstsite, Colchester (2012); Les Modules, Fondation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); and Gymnasium, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2008). In recent years, she has taken part in multiple group exhibitions including: The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2020); May You Live in Interesting Times, Biennale di Venezia 58, Venice (2019); La Vie Moderne, 13eme Biennale de Lyon, Lyon (2015) and Burning Down The House: 10th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2014). Mash Up follows up on Anthea Hamilton’s participation in Don’t You Know Who I Am? Art After Identity Politics, an important research exhibition held at M HKA in 2014 as a large-scale study of the modes and means by which identity, post-identity, and human subjectivity are being considered by new generations of artists.