Welcome to the Winnie-World-Expo! World expos – as noted on the official Expo 2025 Osaka website – showcase new technologies and products for greater convenience in our daily lives. The event tackles global issues and brings together the wisdom of the world to create innovative ideas, presented in temporary, imaginative pavilions. This optimistic bouquet of knowledge sharing, and growth has been at the core of these exhibitions since 1958, the first edition post-World War II. Winnie Claessens (°1989) contemplates how we should approach such prestigious projects. She observes how technology’s promise of progress sometimes misses a hurdle, while, at the same time, we can’t ignore the grain of truth in being optimistic about science.
The artist sees how, today, we appear to relish unprecedented freedoms, thanks to seemingly endless new possibilities. However, she also notes how this freedom simultaneously fuels feelings of alienation, powerlessness, and fear. ‘The idea that technology escapes human control keeps resurfacing, making the world seem increasingly inscrutable and uncontrollable’, Claessens comments. Her art practice faces similar uncertainties. Through her work – and this three-part exhibition – she aims to bridge the gap between our complex contemporary reality and the possibilities that the future holds.
Claessens recreates things to get a better hold of them. The “Winnie Expo” section features a solo presentation showcasing the artist’s new work. Countless transmission towers protrude the space like theatre set pieces of an earthly moon landscape. Together, they sing some kind of symbolic opera of humanity. Presented in snow globes and on concrete pedestals, sometimes in motion, there is something absurd about them. Her futuristic archeology showcases the pylons as the essential tools they actually are. They bear the weight of progress and contemporary communication. These towers are beacons that we continuously utilise, yet hardly notice and even consider obtrusive. Here, they serve the Earth much like the Eiffel Tower serves Paris; a souvenir to be brought home.
It’s a form of realistic science fiction art that marvels at the grand ideas propelling us forward yet struggling to navigate unforeseen circumstances. The repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, too, wore sticky slippers. Claessens has questions about that. Can we accurately predict the future by examining the past? Where are we headed with all these new developments and inventions? And who is putting ethical concerns on display? Should we be colonising Mars merely because a few superpowers are playing geopolitical chess? And, if yes, what should we be packing? “Winnie World”, the second part of the Winnie-World-Expo, links the transmission towers to this broader discussion. Here, Claessens’ entrance and exit ramps are on display — branches of her art practice and other projects that allow her to expand her research. Video, architecture, technology, and politics converge in this space with experiments, studies, and a sense of wonder. Together, they delve into what we commonly refer to as “society”. What decisions are we making?
For the “World Expo”, part three, Claessens invited ten other artists to organise a miniature world exhibition: Anne Beumer, Kasper De Vos, Gilles Dusong, Fabrice Hofmans, Violette Potet, Arash Shahali, Hannelore Vandepoel, Arne Van De Mierop, Arthur Van de Velde, and Wannes Verhees. Each of them designed a small pavilion based on the question: what would you create for a World Expo about the future? This concept helps Claessens navigate her own fears about the state of the world, because, at times, even within the realm of the arts, she finds herself losing track. Does everything always have to be so clearly defined? Who is ever truly sure of themselves?
Gilles Dusong’s (°1995) modular shapes express the complexity of our urbanised environment, evaluating the delicate balance between human progress and the organic world. In a similar vein, Arne Van De Mierop (°1988) constructed a megalith made from a tree divided into four segments. It was first cast in concrete and then burned. What remains is the tree’s cross-shaped fossil, serving as a reminder of nature in a world that is increasingly artificial. Kasper De Vos (°1988) also plays with scale through an everyday object. Using empty pill strips, he constructed a translucent roof like a temple for daily contemporary actions.
Violette Potet’s pavilion (°1999) serves as a panic room, a safe space to hide when danger looms. Will we need such spaces in the future to let go of anxiety? Potet presents nomadic counterparts of several everyday objects, readily available when needed. Wannes Verhees (°1987) also reaches for everyday objects, aiming to represent typical Belgian things with his brick waffles. The pavilion is like a quick-build kit for you to DIY. Arthur Van de Velde (°1998) also assembles things, presenting his self-generating power plant born out of a belief in recycling his immediate environment. However, he admits the machine probably won’t work. Or will it? Is it selÿ-dentiÿication or self-caricaturisation? That’s what Fabrice Hofmans (°1990) is wondering in his flattened preemptive projection.
Hannelore Vandepoel’s practice (°1992) is characterised by quiet colours, popular culture, and adorable creatures. Her design for the “World Expo” stacks the familiar on the new – a miniaturised, foldable version of the artist’s studio perches atop a museum park. In turn, Anne Beumer (°1994) reconstructs the exhibition space the pavilion is located in, using a collage of available images of the gallery. This results in a distorted version of the viewer’s current world. Arash Shahali (°1987) also plays with perception in his pavilion, where the audience is showered with glitter and sequins, offering careless entertainment. Simultaneously, the subjects of the exhibition are objectified and sexualised. Doesn’t this remind you of how world expos used to exhibit people from different cultures alongside vases and other artefacts?
Yasmin Van ’tveld
