In this exhibition artist Joris Lindhout and curator Maaike Gouwenberg deconstruct the romantic and mythical image Hollywood has created of the Southern States, which are labeled ‘failed’ by neo-liberalism.

Starting from Southern Gothic literature a three month long road trip led them through the sun-suffused darkness of the chubby underbelly of America, which bulges over its bible belt.
In their shiny raven Ford Explorer they examined the grounds described by writers like William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, James Dickey, Cormac McCarthy, and Harry Crews in terms of discrimination, fundamentalist Christianity, xenophobic hillbillies, cultural deserts, poverty to name but a few.

What the modern era has gained in civility it has lost in poetic inspiration shows the Southern States through the eyes of artists, musicians and documentary filmmakers from the South, or with years of fascination for the area. How does life look at the other side of the myth?

Supported by
Stroom Den Haag, Gemeente Den Haag, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Fonds BKVB, Materiaal Fonds, Tennessee Arts Commission and University of Memphis

Thanks to
Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam en USDA, ARS, Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit, Georgia, Pierre Tol, Victor Faccinto, and Laura Lashley