Paintings
2023
Vestiges
Exhibition 2025
Vestigios_Remains, Secondroom, Antwerp, Belgium
→ secondroom.org/...
Solo exhibition 2023
Traits d’union, Odradek, Brussels, Belgium
→ odradekresidence.be/...
Vestiges, two oil paintings on rice paper, hand sewn, each 240 × 260 cm, 2023
The series Le lieu qui te revêt, started in 2020 — made up of paintings and collages inspired by the Annunciations by Fra Angelico (Italian painter, 1395-1455) —, gave rise to another one: Vestiges.
The progressive disappearance of images and its survival as remains, is the core of the pieces of Vestiges. The word “vestige” embodies both destruction and permanence. It signifies ruins, the remnants of the past but also traces, like footprints on the ground that bear witness to passage and presence. The collages and drawings mix images of contemporary devastated places with leftovers of materials of the previous work. The residues of images lead our gaze towards a dispersed, contemporary and distant elsewhere.
The large format painting is built with fragments of material, pieces of rice paper drawn, painted, and sewn by hand. It recalls the structure and origin of the Kesa, clothing worn by Zen Buddhist monks and nuns during meditation. The very first Kesas were made of very humble fabrics: the shrouds of the dead, the linens of women in labor... everything that had been soiled that was going to be thrown away was collected. Formally, the Kesa represents a rice field, associating both territory and nourishing. The idea of land emerges, which, like the mind/soul must be plowed and cultivated.
