NOTHING UNWANTED

Artists

Mathijs Hunfeld

Attiyyah Rahman

// NOTHING UNWANTED explores how identity and belonging are increasingly shaped by consumerism, digital spaces, and pop-cultural narratives. The artworks oscillate between collective fantasies and nuanced interpersonal experiences, suggesting hidden traumas, dreams, addictions, and coping mechanisms that balance between truth and reality. As the thresholds between online and physical space continue to dissolve, we constantly navigate ourselves between performance and vulnerability. The multi-medium body of work considers the ways in which today’s digital cultures continue to construct and destabilise our sense of self; it may feel like a condition in which we have exhausted any forthcoming ‘newness’.

// NOTHING UNWANTED maintains close engagement with its conceptual and architectural framework—the horizontal and vertical plane. The horizontal signifies tangible reality, while the vertical operates as a surface of fiction, parallel to a screen or painting. Liminality functions as a central theme throughout the show, where the intersection of these planes produces latent gestures toward what cannot be fully perceived or what lies beyond immediate visibility. The viewer is positioned between object and subject—a cycle of passive consumption and active participation. By translating the gallery space into a fictional landscape, tensions between intensity and disenchantment, and between animate and inanimate states, become apparent.

The space operates as a projection plane in continual destabilisation, locating the artwork within a wider scope of capitalist influence and consumer psychology. This framework is further manifested through the recurring sound work, which combines appropriated ambience that pivots between chaos and rest, creating an immersive yet isolating atmosphere. An activation during the exhibition introduces three Gashapon machines (Japanese capsule vending machines containing collectables) installed in the space for audience interaction. While staging a critical yet playful engagement with systems of reward and addiction, the anticipated outcome becomes a condensed motif for the visual language and critique the exhibition aims to highlight.

// NOTHING UNWANTED seeks to subvert pop-cultural motifs in order to challenge familiar modes of being; figures and recurring symbols act as vessels through which these frictions are made visible. As a result, a ruminative cycle is established—generating a feedback loop that permits these forces to both sustain and destroy themselves.

Attiyyah Rahman (b. 2002, UK) graduated with an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art in 2024, and a BA (Hons) from Leeds Arts University in 2023. Her practice is guided by the autonomy of fantasy, psychological projection, and semi-autobiographical experience, where fiction and reality become increasingly indistinguishable; her anime-inspired character is used to explore questions surrounding representations of gender, youth, and taboo within online spaces. Her work has been exhibited across a variety of spaces, including Camden Art Centre, Leeds Art Gallery, Feelium Gallery, Tate Modern, and Hypha Studios.

Mathijs Hunfeld (b. 2000, Netherlands) graduated with an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art in 2024, and a BA in Product Design from ArtEZ. His practice examines fantasy, desire, and identity by recontextualising everyday objects, exposing tensions between glorification and collapse in late capitalism. Using satire and irony, he critiques emotional dependencies and self-sabotaging behaviour within pop culture. His work has been exhibited and published internationally, including at Tate Modern, the London Design Festival, and Gallery 46; more recently, he will undertake a residency with Art’otel London Hoxton. Alongside his practice he has curated exhibitions, made visual narratives, and project promotion within his area of industry.