Solo Exhibition — Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens

The exhibition Two fleas quarrelling over who owns the dog they live on took place from September 22 to October 5, 2020 and from May 7 to June 26, 2021.

View of the exhibition

Two fleas quarrelling over who owns the dog they live

Text by Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens

The exhibition, Two fleas quarrelling over who owns the dog they live, brings together works that relate to the land that we share, the territory that we appropriate, the soil that we care for, and the ground beneath our feet. As the title suggests, it raises questions about what can be owned and by whom.

We approach land as matter, as a lifeworld, as a conceptual object, as a field of power struggle, and as the site of multiple agencies and responsibilities.

Several works deal with fields of knowledge that use abstract forms of representation, such as surveying and cartography, to inscribe boundaries in the continuum of space and legitimise specific regimes of property and exclusion. These forms of representation enable possession at a distance, a defining feature of colonialism.

Exploring further the conjuncture between abstract processes and land, we consider how farmland has become increasingly financialized. The power of globalised capital is also explored via its influence on scientific research in what has come to be known as L'affaire Louis Robert. In these works, land is revealed as an assemblage of practices, technologies, and discourses that render it ownable and investible.

Yet, soil, water, and plants are essential for the perpetuation of life in all of its forms–they make this world inhabitable–and the exhibition also looks at alternative modes of living with, of and on the land, which pay attention to the material engagements necessary for the maintenance and resurgence of life.

In attempting to go beyond a vision of land as an inanimate resource, or a site of capitalist speculation, we can begin to redo relations in more-than-human webs, and develop attachments that are multi-layered and committed. These connexions would enable us to re-imagine ways of inhabiting the land that are up to the task of engaging with the joy and the troubles of interdependent existences.