Somerset House - Jenkin van Zyl: Enclosure

Jenkin van Zyl: Enclosure

A newly commissioned film and installation by Somerset House Studios artist Jenkin van Zyl, that explores a culture where technological advancement has outpaced our ability to make sense of it.

Enclosure is set within a decaying facility that was once designed for replication—a destination where tourists could temporarily inhabit the lives of others. Each year, on Founding Day, Donors return to either renew or terminate their doubles, known as Cherubs, through a ritual intended to sever the connection between original and copy.

Mercy, a starlet who lent her likeness to the programme, arrives to terminate her contract. Instead, the process begins to collapse the distance between them, and what was designed as a clear division becomes porous and unstable.

At its core, the work asks what happens when systems built on desire and self-preservation outlast the conditions that created them. In a world where meaning erodes faster than systems can adapt, Enclosure presents maintenance as a form of denial, as institutions, technologies, and individuals persist in upkeep beyond its purpose.

The installation extends Enclosure into a large-scale immersive environment where audiences move through the material remains of the facility—fairground signage, holograms, inflatable cocoons, decaying ephemera—a world still performing its upkeep long after the system it served has collapsed.