1/5
Display all
Close
ARCHIVE: This exhibition is closed
During this exhibition, the young artist Line Boogaerts presents work of her own, but as curator also invited several interesting Congolese artists. Together they enter into a dialogue with the work of Frank Brangwyn, whose oeuvre has a permanent place in the Arentshuis.
Line Boogaerts (°1986, Leuven) is a Belgian visual and performance artist. Her projects are developed from designs that she makes on windows, glass doors or other large sheets of glass, which she then erases almost immediately. Her work is strongly performative in nature and is reminiscent of traditional techniques for painting on glass. Boogaerts includes blind spots in her work as motifs, whilst at the same time bringing other blind spots into focus, such as hidden histories, art and artists in the margin, or secret stories or meanings.
The exhibition 'é/change', which is part of the 'Mind the Artist' arts festival, follows on from her residence and its related exhibition in Centre d’art Waza in Lubumbashi, Congo, in 2019. In addition to her own work, Boogaerts presents as curator the work of various other Congolese artists with whom she has worked over the years. Célestin Kabuya (date and place of birth unknown) acts as a standard bearer for the so-called 'first generation' of modernist artists from Congo. However, the more recent generations of artists are also well represented, amongst others by Paul Malaba (°1990, Gbadolite, Congo) and the Belgian-Congolese spoken-word artist Muabana (°1989, Kinshasa, Congo).
In this exhibition, Line Boogaerts, together with her Congolese collaborators, enters into a dialogue with the work of the British artist and designer Frank Brangwyn (Bruges, 1867 – 1956), whose oeuvre is on permanent display in the Arentshuis. She manages to build a bridge between her own work and that of het Congolese colleagues with Brangwyn’s artistic forms and craftsmanship, as well as exploring his relationship with Africa, a subject on which even today it is still not possible to give a clear and definitive answer. In this way, she creates an interaction between different points of view and different works of art that transcends generational boundaries.
Boogaerts transforms the Arentshuis into a moveable landscape and converts the museum into a meeting place for artists from different countries and different periods. At the same time, she has constructed a laboratory in which she experiments with the physical boundaries of the viewing and experience processes of the exhibition's visitors, who are required to go in search of hidden artists, double meanings and secret agendas. In this way, she makes us think more deeply about the blind spots in our social, artistic and cultural perception.
Photo: Line Boogaerts
Photos: Tim Theo Deceuninck
