Nose to Flees at Rib

Artists: Artun Alaska Arasli, Mat Do, Nicholas Riis, Evita Vasiįjeva

Exhibition title: Nose to Flees

Venue: Rib, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Date: August 20 – September 3, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Rib, Rotterdam

Is it a coincidence that a solarium opens like an oyster, falls like a head falling asleep^[1]? A headache was gathering like the weather, ironic because its cause was dehydration. Always first heat then heat-sick. The air was collapsing but there was nowhere to hide, because the orchard was genetically modified and the trees were felled but a shadow fell on your head and broke it in two anyway. A butcher is someone generally male, cutting muscles with muscles of his own, owns a walk-in freezer and nothing else. One look at him and I knew he could never be one. Do you know that I said,”Ur the ugliest motherfucker ive ever seen”, and he said, “I’m missing chromosomes”, and I felt too ashamed to sleep that night and when I did, I had a congenital disease dream, and I was snowed in upon waking? Good times… In 2013, some Canadians thought their money smelled like maple syrup. Some kids used to sell scratch and sniff cards on the side of the road to the orchard. A variety: “Tonsil Stones”, gross, “Polio”, ugh, no, “Humpty Dumpty Egg Yolk After a Day in the Sun”, oddly specific but OK. Here, “Italy Avalanche”. Sounds like a drugstore perfume. Like us, an avalanche has nowhere else to go, how romantic. Bury me bury me bury me. Your hair the shavings of a scented eraser, a rubbing that effaces signs but produces odor, a life-long campaign. In the kitchen of a roadside diner people are washing ashtrays for minimum wage. Me, I’m understated. Did you seriously not know you had a dimple?, and she’s livid, because how can anyone not know they have a dimple? Change of topic: we eat muscles to maintain muscles. This is like some stupid meme, I hate this. When the snow cleared I ventured into the supermarkets. I was walking back when I saw the stitched arm on a man. Say he’s the Stitched Arm Man. Collagen Man. Asshole. Later that day I was sitting in the garden drinking energy drinks, looking up stuff. What the fuck is powdered peanut butter? Healthy people are insane. What gives? The neighbour brought me a cucumber from the vegetable garden. I love her little nose, I ate the cucumber. Better she said, much better. In the mornings, I could hear her singing a song too long in the shower. Her southern lisp is eating at my little heart, bless it. A shark attack, she said, that her husband is a victim of. His biceps is gone, replaced by one of his two calves, or some his one calf. He limps. “That’s how the shark week turns into the shark month”, I said. Silence. Lack of a biceps has implications beyond social stigma, duh. You can’t pull her closer. Perhaps I can volunteer. I don’t have the money. I’m missing teeth. But yes, of course I want your cucumber. Everyone’s flying towards the sun hastily. Me, I’m patient. Lattisimus dorsi is literally a big back. Latin is so lame. Together with your big back you could pull yourself on a wall, out of water, into a boat, if there is a boat. The clouds are now retracting, like a hunchback walking backwards. In slow motion. When you’re on the wall you could sit on a wall next to the egg. Have a chat with him. Ça va bien Monsieur Dumtpy? Pass on what you’ve learned. It’s not just an egg, it’s the egg that jolts forward to meet the seed of life, etc. A tumor is practically an egg that can’t or won’t hatch. I’ve read that in “Letters to a Young Egg”. And ever since I’ve been waiting to present myself, like the guru who fed his body to the tigers, here I am! your family’s favorite cuckold. I don’t need my arms to kill you. You throw a punch with your core, silly. I scratched and sniffed your rotting shoulder. I kind of liked it. This keyboard is disgusting. You are testy as hell. I love your little nose but I hate your smell. I passed you by in the cafe you work at, you were reading a book about modern love. Later I looked it up like I look up stuff and so modern it was not. Later I looked it up

Untitled (Text for Nose to Flees) 2017

Artun Alaska Arasli

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This exhibition is produced as part of Rib’s Summer Lab:

From summer 2017 Rib will dedicate its summer slot July and August to an open call for exhibition proposals and activities by young artists mainly from Rotterdam. Next to producing an exhibition or developing a public program the selected artists will become your new host, run the space and determine its new opening hours.

^[1]. It being coital times for us both, opens wide like your legs, why not?