Fanja Bouts: A Largely Distorted yet Surprisingly Ordered Map of Regular Irregularities

'My work is a large-scale chaotic map, in the form of a knitted tapestry, of a world that happens to resemble ours, filled with absurd characters, cosmology and space travel, contradicting philosophical messages and a whole lot of satire’.

This summer, we’ll be home to a monumental tapestry by Dutch artist Fanja Bouts. It starts in the middle, with what amounts to a “Big Bang” for the capitalist world order and develops outwards into chaotically collapsing paths. Maps show us the way, yet here we are confronted with dense scenes and symbols depicting social injustice, climate catastrophe and economic inequalities. For Fanja, our pursuit for endless growth has fuelled a world that is collapsing.

In the context of Chapter, a space for coming and being together, a place to think about the ways we live and how we might imagine new futures, Fanja invites you to follow the lines of her map and consider ideas of co-existence, consumption and care otherwise. 

Fanja Bouts critically assesses the challenges that we face today through illustrated webs of life. With a background in physics and astronomy, moving image and most recently a master's in environmental sciences, recurring themes such as reimagining our planet in a just, more-than-human ecological framework are viewed through the lens of political ecology, philosophy and natural sciences. An edition of this work was previously shown as part of MANIFESTA 15 in 2024.