FLUSH #9: Pest Revenge
“Pest Revenge” is a sculptural duo exhibition at W139 by Rotterdam-based artists Clem Edwards and Natalia Sorzano. It is the second iteration of their collaboration, which began in the summer of 2024 at Brutus Rotterdam with the exhibition Trash Revenge.
This current revenge will consist of a series of sculptures made from accessible and found objects and materials symbolizing animals and insects that are considered unwanted, invasive, toxic and/or negative in the local urban context, i.e. rats, pigeons, mosquitos, parakeets, tics, cockroaches, bed bugs and silverfish. They will use the spatial qualities of FLUSH to experiment with exhibition-making as a tool for storytelling.
Thematically Clem and Natalia are interested in exploring the idea of toxicity. What or who designates other life as ‘outside’, ‘invasive’ or ‘dangerous’? Without disregarding the infrastructural and health-based threats posed by the common rat (Rattus norvegicus) in the Netherlands, how or why is this rat, which is indigenous to the region, designated as toxic? What stories do we tell ourselves to make this so? The common rat even has a hotline dedicated to its eradication on the Rotterdam municipality’s website. They are two artists from countries with their own unique flora and fauna, both of which were colonized by European states that introduced flora and fauna and modes of relating to life-worlds that devastated the landscapes. So they are particularly interested in how notions of the ‘unwanted’ work in the Western European context.
We are happy to end the year 2025 of FLUSH with our friends Nika and Clem and their pest revenge. This has been a one year conversation and we are happy that it is finally materializing.
Please join us for this last moment of togetherness, before the winter holidays.
As we keep doing things with our friends, we realize we are finding a way to have agency of our realities as artists.
Mariana and Francisca
Espacio estamos Bien
