No Man Is An Island, 2015

Newspapers supply information but may also foster fear of others and shop bells allow merchants to monitor new arrivals and departures. But, when deprived of their original functions, as Lucas Lenglet (1972, the Netherlands) has done by creating an illegible newspaper (‘Body (fd)’) and silencing shop bells by welding them to a base (‘No Man is an Island’), more metaphorical meanings emerge and we are forced to stop and think. How do we as individuals relate to a society in which fear of ‘the other’ is becoming increasingly commonplace? “Art can initiate change,” says Lenglet, “a change in attitude or thinking.”