Contamination at Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg: Mire Lee

Encounters, contact and coalition are processes of contamination. Distinct entities collide and change. A substance, being or community is tainted, corrupted or afflicted by something else. Purity is an illusion. Phantasms of purity characterise the ventures of European Western modernity. They reside in, but aren’t limited to epistemological pursuits, the striving for stable categories, precise boundaries and clear-cut identities. These imaginaries tend to be centred on a rational, self-determined subject – all too often straight, white and male – who claims to embody the human in its purest form.