Johanna Hedva. The Clock Is Always Wrong. 2022. Kinetic sculptural objects, textile prints, found objects, drawings, text, audio.

First exhibited as part of the exhibition YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal at Gropius Bau Berlin, Johanna Hedva’s The Clock Is Always Wrong is a series of material interventions with historical objects from the Wellcome Collection. From a one-time use hourglass filled with black pigment that lasts the duration of the exhibition to a honey-philic mold contained inside a water sample from the Vltava river in their mother’s homeland in Prague, each work functions as a unique measurement of time outside of traditional linear units. In an interview with Sonja Borstner for Berliner Festspiele in which Hedva expresses skepticism for simple readings of their work through the lens of disability, they put forth: “however, there’s one thing I realised over the process of working on this show which I think might just be the single most important element to ensure an anti-ableist, anti-capitalist working condition: enough time.” Hedva asserts time as a real and finite resource that can both be tracked and consumed. The word “enough,” just like Hedva’s work, opens this invisible force up to subjective interpretation.