Sean Edwards: Undo Things Done – Venice Biennale 2019

Sean Edwards discusses growing up in a community with low expectations and expressing the most honest version of self as an artist, through his multi-media Wales in Venice installation Undo Things Done.
For his Venice Biennale installation Undo Things Done, Sean Edwards (b1980, Cardiff) has used the simple, sculpted spaces of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice – a former church now given over to education – to evoke the boundaries and forces that constrict and support us, that nourish and deprive, within the particular context of experiencing poverty and marginalisation within a Welsh community. He says that, while making the work, he had two phrases in mind: “The phrase of ‘not expecting much’ … as a way of living for a great deal of the population in Wales, the UK and globally. And also an idea of ‘the most honest version of yourself’, which is a Fassbinder quote I came across through the work of Moyra Davey (b1958), the Canadian artist, and how by putting the most honest version of yourself into the work you might create a greater resonance for the viewer.”
Sean Edwards: Undo Things Done
Wales in Venice, Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, 11 May – 24 November 2019
Interview by VERONICA SIMPSON
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY