Okra-Homa Projects presents Plague, a video installation by Berlin-based Dutch artist Puck Verkade. From the perspective of a frustrated housefly fantasising aloud about exterminating humanity, Plague (2019) looks at the psychological and parasitic aspects of ecological crises, and their impact on our lives. These aspects are manifested not only in our domestic environment and throughout the planet—building recursively “a home within a home within a home”—but at the same time in our psyche.

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In an uncannily domestic environment made in Verkade’s signature style, Plague relates that by damaging the Earth, we are damaging ourselves. Therefore, along with the urgent ecological breakdown, there is also a looming collective psychological collapse.

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“Central to my interest when working on Plague was the concept of Solastalgia. It is a sociological term coined by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe a form of mental or existential distress caused by climate trauma that is changing our shared habitat. This is what compelled me to tell the story from the perspective of the housefly. Usually the housefly is regarded as a domestic pest, an invasive species that plagues our homes. However, compared to the melodramatic housewife, here the housefly is very articulate and questions if humans are the real pest on Earth. It functions as the messenger between the indoor and outdoor worlds, breaking up the confines of the housewife’s psyche.”

 

In Plague, various scales of Solastalgia unfold, comparing the Earth, the domestic home and the personal psyche as interconnected habitats of suffering. Set within a playfully hand-crafted installation—referencing a key scene from the film—made specifically for Verkade’s debut in China, Plague approaches environmental and psychological collapse not with doom, but with dark humour and absurdity.

 

Plague was generously supported and co-funded by DordtYart, The Netherlands and the Mondriaan Fund. The work is held in several private and public collections, including the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; Servais Family Collection; EKARD collection, and Blue Knowledge Art Collection amongst others.

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The current exhibition is generously supported by Mondriaan Fund and The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
 

Puck Verkade (b. 1987, The Hague) received her BFA from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and completed an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London. Her work has been shown at various international venues, such as the 8th Yokohama Triennial, Japan; the 16e Biennale de Lyon: Manifesto Of Fragility; Artissima Art Fair in Turin; Biennale of the Possible Image, Liege; Wroclaw Contemporary Museum in Poland; Art Antwerp, Belgium; Kunstmuseum The Hague; LISTE Art Fair, and Kunstmuseum Gegenwart in Basel. She was selected as a 2017-2018 resident artist at Sarabande The Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation in London. In 2021, she received the prestigious Charlotte Koehler Prize from the Prins Bernhard Culture Fund in The Netherlands.

 

Verkade’s work is held in private and public collections internationally such as Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Servais Family Collection in Brussels, and EKARD Collection in Wassenaar, amongst others. Since 2018 Verkade has been invited to teach, lecture and host workshops at various BA and MA studies across Europe.