Benjamin Francis’ installation consists of a tower made of aluminium and mirrors, in the middle of a basin filled with liquid soap and softener that is pumped up from the inside of the tower, to spill down again along the surfaces of the mirrors. The installation invites viewers to observe it from different positions in space. Looking at themselves in the mirror, they see their own image being ‘washed’ and ‘softened’. At the same time, due to the constant circulation, the soap will ‘rot’ during the exhibition run. In his practice Francis refers to authoritarian structures that underline modes of behaviour and what is seen as incorrect and as correct, clean and dirty, right and wrong. The work presented at Syb is indicative of this. Its title Guard Gates directly invokes the panopticon principle, whereby a guard can view all prisoners from a tower in the middle of the prison. Guard Gates is a powerful symbol of invisible authority that influences how we behave and move through life, with a never-ending sense of surveillance.

Benjamin Francis graduated from the Fine Arts programme at ArtEZ BEAR in Arnhem in 2020. Within his work he reflect on his lived experience of continuously being corrected for spelling mistakes, due to his dyslexia. These dissonances or errors are carefully corrected in our current-day society, as anything outside the norm is deemed unproductive and therefore excluded. By exposing the hidden dynamics of the power relations that structure and regulate the way we were taught to distinguish right from wrong, he questions how those systems came into existence and who holds the position to dictate those binary oppositions. Benjamin has recently shown at Hotel Maria Kapel, Het HEM, P/////AKT, Singular Art, and Mutter, among others.