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The Kingdom of the Ill exhibition is the second chapter in the long-term research program TECHNO HUMANITIES launched in 2021 by the Museion Director Bart van der Heide with the TECHNO exhibition (on display until 16 March 2022). In the years to come the program will continue to engage Museion spaces and activities by exploring the way in which phenomena connected to technology, ecology and free global exchange have become entwined with each other and our own identities.

Through the work and contributions of artists and international activists, Kingdom of the Ill seeks to respond to the current debate on health and illness, contamination and purity, care and neglect by asking about how and by whom a body is defined as healthy or sick, in what ways welfare systems and corporate assistance determine healthcare, and how the common definitions of good health can be breached.

The title of the exhibition – curated by Sara Cluggish and Pavel S. Pyś with a layout designed by the Diogo Passarinho Studio – refers to the work of the American critic Susan Sontag Illness as Metaphor (1978), indicating that this research, which starts from Sontag’s reflections, investigates the relationship between the individual and the contemporary social, corporate and institutional systems that influence our experience of healing and well-being. Given burnout, nervous breakdowns, public healthcare cuts, rampant capitalist exploitation and the growing lack of distinction between online and offline can we still really say we are fit and healthy?