Political power is a highly desirable “commodity” in most societies. We are, as we always have been, and always will be, shaped by political power and its desirability.

The visual appearance of power, and its apparatuses (whether public or private) is of course related, directly or indirectly (depending on strategy), to its convictions and its ideologies. Such appearances have representative functions.

This we know––sometimes––as we perceive consciously and subconsciously. This we experience on a daily basis, consciously or subconsciously. With practical and political motivations in mind, the everyday is “designed,” and thus, the everyday is decided upon––how it does and does not appear (from a particular bend in the road to the tone of a judges’s cape, from the architectural mapping of a public school to the font of a brochure).

The politics of representation is a subject matter that never loses its power. This project plays within this prismatic field through reflective artistic and design ideas. And within that, reflecting upon their own set of power structures, the exhibition explores the politics within or between art and design.

(Johannes Buss & Jennifer Hope Davy)