List of Works

001Erosion
2024
’Erosion’ is a meditation on the fractures that shape us. It is a reflection on identity as both foundation and burden, on belonging as both anchor and constraint. At its core lies the tension between what we inherit and what we create, between the promises we are told and the realities we endure.

It is a project shaped by contradiction. ‘Erosion’ is historical, it’s social, it’s psychological. It is about America as an idea and as a lived reality. It is about the fault lines, visible and invisible, that run through communities, through relationships, through the very ways people see themselves and each other.

Built on the myths of individualism and freedom, ‘Erosion’ emerges from the remnants of past certainties now unraveling. It exists in the tension between movement and stagnation. If erosion is a process, then it is one that works on both land and people. It carves away at structures, at identities, at the bonds that once held things together. It leaves behind fragments; memories of a different time, gestures of resilience, echoes of something lost.
And yet, like the land itself, something remains. Whether it is endurance or merely inertia is an open question. ‘Erosion’ does not offer conclusions, only traces of what has been worn away, and what might still be left to hold on to.

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002Spectacle
2022

Across the former USSR, one of the strongest visual indexes of all that has been wrought over the past thirty years has come in the dramatic transformation of urban landscapes.

‘Spectacle’ aims to examine these processes by taking the example of Azerbaijan and Georgia. Azerbaijan, which in the last two decades has remade its capital Baku, demolishing entire neighborhoods to make way for gigantic new building projects. And the urban development of Georgia, especially initiated by the ambitious development programs of former president Mikheil Saakashvili, which were halted in 2012 when his party lost the election.

‘Spectacle’ is a chronicle of the built and unbuilt, the actual and the visual and the process in which the space between images and realities is reconfigured. It argues that buildings and monuments should be seen as forms of political action and examines how architecture is used to shape subjectivities, identities, and cognitions. It explores the power of architecture and the architecture of power.

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003Identity Negotiation
2019

Growing up, with all its pain, confusion, and exhilaration, is an experience that confronts young people everywhere. It is about learning the rules and following them or choosing to challenge them, staying in the realm of your family or breaking away, and either accepting or fighting your designated role in society.

‘Identity Negotiation’ examines in Kaliningrad, the former Prussian city of Königsberg, a new generation of young people as they navigate their identities. Once the easternmost city in the German Reich, this is now the westernmost city in the Russian Federation. Following the Soviet annexation during World War II, the region was rebuilt in a Soviet ideology. During the Cold War it was a military zone that was closed to foreigners.

Now sandwiched between EU members Poland and Lithuania, this region’s new isolation gives it unique potential due to its proximity to western Europe. ‘Identity Negotiation’ is a portrait of a city that is coming to terms with its conflicted past. The youth coexists with their city and its monuments, as they navigate their complicated history into their own future.

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© Lukas van Bentum