A Smoker’s Theatre is a film by Caz Egelie and Jesse Strikwerda, made during their residency at Kunsthuis Syb. During their stay, they produced new sets and installations to play a part in a changing play, with new actors playing a different role each time. In doing so, they drew on the Frisian tradition of Iepenloftspullen (open air plays), questions surrounding the identity of the artist and Bertold Brecht’s ideas about The Smoker’s Theatre. During the Triennial they will show a new adaptation of the film in an installation specially made for the location.

Caz Egelie (1994) creates installations, performances, two-dimensional works and videos. In their multi-disciplinary body of work the visual vocabulary of the works is combined with Caz’ conceptual approach, and their appetite for theatre and performativity. By referring to art history and other artists, and taking on unusual ways of production and presentation, Caz plays a game of ping-pong with real and fake, fact and fiction, reproduction and ‘the artist’s signature’. By denying categorisations like these, Caz engages in institutional critique from the position of the jester, resulting in what one could call ‘institutional jest’.

Jesse Strikwerda (1991) creates installations and sculptures in which the manipulability of reality is central. Unraveling the layers of a constructed reality is the starting point for an investigation into the framework of an image. Constructions get pushed over, raised up, hidden and shown to an audience. Backdrops are hung in front of each other, as a concealment of the underlying structure, and then lifted again by the artist to provide the same structure with a stage. Elements from reality (building materials, party items, found objects) are interspersed with images (drawings, comic-like elements and clay objects), creating an exciting game in which it becomes painfully clear in a playful way that everything can be made and dismantled.