Output details

Heartland

This project forms part of Esche’s long-term concern with art and its production in specific regional and cultural situations. For Heartland Esche travelled the length of the Mississippi River to gather examples of visual and music culture. The aim was to shed light on a part of the world that is paradoxically ‘hidden in the light’ of the worldwide attention given to the USA. It explored the numerous small-scale projects at work in the mid-west and the innovative forms of practice they generate, to create a counter argument to the dominance of the east and west coasts as the sum of all US art activity.

The research journey was disseminated in an extensive web journal, and collated on the websites of the various collaborating institutions. Following the exhibition and events held at the Van Abbemuseum and the Musikcentrum, Eindhoven, the show was re-curated by Esche and co-curators for the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago. Both exhibitions included conferences addressing issues of regionalism and the clichés of the US mid-west.

The exhibitions and events distilled this extensive research into a coherent statement: the presentation of work by 27 artists; a comprehensive review of arts organisations in the US mid-west; summaries of the work of each artist in the exhibition; the compilation and publication of twelve contextual essays and an account of the curatorial process.

Heartland was reviewed in both US and Dutch press and rated as one of the best exhibitions of 2009 in the NRC Handelsblad (an established daily newspaper in the Netherlands). It informed Esche’s subsequent work in the Middle East and Balkan area, providing an understanding of how underground developments emerge, sometimes in known cultural centres, but often with their routes in more regional conditions far away from the metropolis.