Robota
Verena Blok
Verena's most recent work, the video Robota, was acquired by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
"In Robota, Verena Blok highlights the mechanic power of the muscular, hyper-masculine body in motion, and draws attention to its former idealization and eroticization in Soviet propaganda. The artist reveals how, in Poland, a climate of precariousness and economic hardship has allowed xenophobic rhetoric to fill the void created by the decline of socialist ideology. Recording herself in conversation with the men, Blok shows how they simultaneously propagate and suffer from prejudice, and gravitate toward the same nativist policies that limit their own freedoms." - Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Verena Blok (b. 1990, The Netherlands) studied at the Royal Academy of Arts (KABK) in the Hague and AKV I St. Joost in Breda. She has recently been selected as a resident for the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten 2020-2021. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam; Utrecht Central Station, and Galeria Fotografii PF, Poznań (PL). Her latest film ‘Robota’ (2018) has been acquired by Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam for its permanent collection.
Verena has a deep interest in personal histories and narrative storytelling. Intrigued by the way cultural and political factors influence one’s life, she uses her lens-based practice to shed light on inner life and everyday “reality” in intimate settings. The encounter with the subject is the core of and the fuel for her work. To a large extent, Blok’s photography and video work is driven by the complex, paradoxical, tragic, and sometimes humorous set of social and cultural relations that form everyday life in Poland. As a Dutch-Polish dual citizen raised in The Netherlands and The United States, Blok has a keen awareness of her position moving between East and West. By coming close to her subjects and embedding herself for stretches of time, she uses these locations as her studio, a backdrop to the narratives that both artist and subject become part of.