In his book “Ewige Feile”, first published in 1983, Albert Oehlen merged his own photographic collages on themes such as naturism, art and war with poems by Wolfgang Bauer. Even if back then the pubescent bodies were not necessarily seen as sexualized, their proximity to belligerent images from the media triggers an everlasting connection between sex and violence – and it is not a mere hypothesis anymore that the two come down to the same clusters of neurons. Continuing this unsettling convergence of sexuality and war explored in the last decades by a number of artists – Albrecht Dietrich, Robert Heinecken, Martha Rosler, Thomas Hirschhorn, to name but a few – Tiane Doan na Champassak restages Oehlen’s publication in light of recent nudity norms by covering up the children’s genitalia with cutouts from another book by the same artist titled “Secession” (2004). In this double act of appropriation, the haunting meaning of the original works is reframed, yet enhanced, through elements of censorship, underlying how nudity conventions evolved since the original publication of “Ewige Feile” by Walther König almost forty years ago. (Larisa Oancea)

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“The Veil of Maya 5” continues a series of artist’s books published since 2018 in a very limited edition of 35 copies each. Taking its title from a common metaphor defining the state of perennial illusion in which people are trapped, “The Veil of Maya” project deals with the duality of enchantment-disenchantment from seven different perspectives. In this editorial experiment, photography is often mixed with appropriated materials from various sources, both textual and visual, creating a profusion of eclectic scenarios.

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The Veil of Maya 5

Tiane Doan na Champassak

35 copies / 56 pages

29 x 26 cm

Singer sewing with two threads of different colours

Each copy has one original collage

March 2023