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Unlike her previous projects, “The Drunkard’s Cloak” is Nys’ first non site-specific spatial installation; in this instance comprised of a collection of crude objects that allude to these pillories and the cultural mores they engender. The objects are painted in light yellow, a color historically viewed as the color of shame and betrayal (yellow garments were prescribed for evil woman and traitors; Judas is often depicted in yellow), and hence its absence in medieval and early renaissance paintings. Nys’ montage of austere found objects (objects that were all used as 'temporary stages' to expose people on in times or places where the shame pole wasn't present) are imbued with an aura of complicity once enveloped in this history of violent social control. A sound recording of a scientific text describing the history of the pillory in Belgium serves as a narrative key to understanding this setting.
A step ladder stands literally on a discarded witness to an appalling past: a reprint of a section of Au Pilori, a French WWII-era anti- Semitic newspaper from 1941, lying on the ground as an arbitrarily chosen floor protection. As the contemporary vehicle for public humiliation, presenting such an extremely horrific version of the modus operandi of the media, Nys herself exposes the inherently abusive nature of authority.
As in her older works, Nys appropriates mundane objects (bricks, an old toilet seat, a public sign…) and by way of juxtaposition or re-contextualization, she alludes to the meanings instilled in these objects at a particular moment in modern history. Although often intrigued by the languages of Conceptual and Minimal art of the recent past, in “The Drunkard’s Cloak” Nys reaches further into history for the roots of today’s mechanisms of social control. Unceremoniously hanging on a wall at the entrance of the exhibition, a newspaper clipping from De Dordtenaar of August 31, 2010, reports on an attempt by Food authorities to expose the hygiene levels of restaurant kitchens through a publicly placed insignia available for public perusal. Stigmatization, in its contemporary forms, perhaps remains an essential ingredient in the exercise power.
The project was recently shown at Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp and in Artissima 17, Turin.
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