“Each day is woven in the expectation and in the hope of seeing a hint of meaning floating on the stream of dreams, something that holds, like a boat, a fish out of water that we could grab, a whisper that we could hear thanks to the slow stroke, to the touch under our fingers.” Thierry Bodson, excerpt from a poem from the “Des champs des puits” project.

 

For the solo exhibition Traits d'union at ODRADEK, I pursue the reflection on painting, language, and space, which started from the Annunciations of Fra Angelico in the project Le lieu qui te revêt and on the connections between language, drawing and textile in the Des Champs des puits project.

Traits d’union associates works created by concentrated and meticulous gestures, through techniques such as collage or sewing, which link posture to breath.

My works are constructed with fragments of material, pieces of rice paper drawn, painted and sewn by hand for the paintings and morsels of impressions of Annunciations and of press photographs, on paper, for the collages.

Leftovers are placed on the paper, vestiges of images leading our gaze towards a dispersed, contemporary and distant elsewhere. Read more 

La surface du chant by Didier Escole

 

Traits d'union, solo exhibition at ODRADEK gallery, November 2023, Brussels, Belgium.

 

Installation view. Vestiges, oil painting on rice paper, hand sewn 240 x 260 cm (each painting), 2023. Photo Gilles Ribero.

 

Installation view. Vestiges, oil painting on rice paper, hand sewn 240 x 260 cm (each painting), 2023. Photo Gilles Ribero.

Vestiges, technique mixte sur papier, 13 x 19.5 cm, 2023.

Installation view, collages of Le lieu qui te revêt project, 2021-22. Photo Gilles Ribero.

Project Des champs des puits, crochet,  430 x 10 cm , 2019. Photo Gilles Ribero.

 Detail crochet,  430 x 10 cm , 2019, Photo Gilles Ribero.

Project Des champs des puits. Installation view. Mixed medias, variable dimensions, 2018-22. Photo Gilles Ribero

 

The works Langue vagabonde, Chaque jour qui passe et Ensemble errant were part of the exhibition "Text, texture, textile" at Odradek, Brussels,  summer /spring 2022.

 

Langue Vagabonde

Langue Vagabonde, performances by Marina Gasparini and Natalia Blanch, September 17, 2022. https://vimeo.com/803041016

The encounter between Marina and Natalia’s work is in the idea of displacement. Marina refers to the movement of objects using the phrase “What migrated was portable”. She created lettering by sewing together used fabric clothing whose textures mainly represented flowers. In her performance, Marina packages the letters one by one in the order of the sentence.

In her work, Natalia alludes to the movement of people. She manipulates her work Réparation made of pieces of rice paper torn and sewn by hand, approximately 4 x 3 m. An excerpt from the poem “Separation” by John Berger is embroidered on its surface. This poem addresses the profound transformations that affect the lives of people who emigrate.

Her hand-sewn rice paper works evoke attempts at repair and reconstruction based on her experience.

The gesture of unfolding and folding the large, embroidered work of art and the recitation of the excerpt from the poem constitutes her performance and, according to Simone Schuiten, “implies the care and risk we face every time we defy the constraint of leave our places and our roots.”

 

Ensemble Errant

Ensemble errant, oil on hand-sewn paper, crocheted text, 130 x 110 cm, 2022 (detail).

Ensemble Errant was created in response to the phrase “What migrated was portable”, with which Marina Gasparini constructed one of her works.

Ensemble Errant was built while travelling and has a foldable and light character that can be found in other of my works. I work in strips which are here linked together by crocheted words: “[…] into what currency have they changed our singing? […]”, extract from the poem Separation by John Berger, constituting the structure of the work.

This poem talks about emigration -what we bring and what we leave behind when migrating- language and its transmutation.

 

Chaque jour qui passe

Chaque jour qui passe, series of drawings from Des champs des puits project. Indian ink, pencil and thread on paper, dimensions variable, 2018-2022.

Des champs des puits, book project of drawings and poems, 14.5 x 21 cm, 170 pages. Collaboration with Thierry Bodson. 2018-22.

The series Chaque jour qui passe is part of the book project Des champs des puits in collaboration with Thierry Bodson, where the dialogue between my project Minimal drawings and his poetry have engendered constellations of drawings/poems which alter through successive translations and transformations.

Le project Le lieu qui te revêt was developed during the artist residency at Firm Artlab from October 2021 to Januar 2022. Brussels, Belgium.

 

Le lieu qui te revêt is composed of paintings and collages inspired by the Annunciations by Fra Angelico (Italian painter, 1395-1455).

I extracted a few words or sentences from the analysis that Georges Didi-Huberman carries out in the book "Before the image", of the fresco of the Annunciation that Fra Angelico painted in cell three of the San Marco convent in Florence. These words guided me when making decisions about my pictorial choices:

“Mystery. Frontal white. Contemplation surface, a dream screen. Angelico’s white, this almost nothing visible. The Annunciation, the announcement. The image of everything that devours us in the evidence of dreams. Exegetical work that the use of a pigment manages to deliver itself. What is in front of becomes all around, and the white that the monk was contemplating perhaps whispers to him: I am the place where you live - the cell itself -, I am the place that contains you. Thus, do you make yourself present to the mystery of the Annunciation, beyond representing it to yourself. The place that covers you.” 

text "Le lieu qui te revêt"

 

Oil painting on rice paper, hand sewn, 280 x 176 cm, 2021. Photo Gaethan Dehoux. Firm Artlab, Brussels, Belgium, 2021/22

 

Collage on paper, 21.5 x 25.3 cm, 2021.

 

Gianni Caravaggio, Valentina Perazzini, Natalia Blanch - Yamamo karate club, Brussels, 4 and 5 May 2019.

 

Valentina Perazzini wrote as introduction to the exhibition:

"It’s been a while since I have wanted to gather in a common exhibition visual artists who, like me, are also devoted martial artists (by devoted I mean artists that are equally committed to their visual as well as their martial art); therefore, when I was afforded the opportunity to intervene in a dojo, this event assumed its raison d'être."

Text by Valentina Perazzini

Pictures by Alessandro Costanzo

 

Delicada Urgencia, pencil on paper 62 x 80 cm and 100 x 200 cm each, 2019 / “When I see the eyes I have in mine tattooed”, thread dyed by hand and crocheted 9 x 173.5 cm, 2016.

 

Delicada Urgencia (detail) pencil on paper 100 x 200 cm each, 2019.

 

Next to the Kamiza (altar): Delicada urgencia, pencil on paper 39 x 58 cm, 2019

 

Delicada urgencia is a series of drawings made for the exhibition "Keep in touch". The title is from a poem by Alejandra Pizarnik. In her poetry, language (the extreme precision of words and form) opens to silence, to an interior space of a powerful fluidity.

In this series, I wonder specifically about disappearance.

Symbolic disappearance of the ego to let the work (and the movement) emerge. The dojos of aikido and meditation are the perfect places to become aware of one's ego and to modify it, from a selfish ego to a less egoist self.

Disappearance also refers to death. On the one hand I feel the urgency of the movement and I see unfold on the tatami the warlike origin of the techniques and its transformation into disciplines whose aspiration is the harmony between human beings. On the other hand I wonder what it is to die, and therefore to live? In the book The Spirit of Aikido, Kisshômaru Ueshiba writes: “It does not matter how long life lasts, it only lasts a second, renewed by our mind at every moment."

Stanche Mani and Réparation, 2019

Which kind of reflection can an artist bring on stage about the current social and political environment?

Stanche Mani is a feminist piece about this artistic engagement. Lisa Da Boit dances upon the ashes of Ferocia, her last enraged solo. She now shares the stage with Sophie de Beer that replaces Farah Chammah. They search together, with the complicity of Natalia Blanch as a witness of silence and persistence, for another sense of this broken world, deep in sorrow. Stanche Mani is a poem that keeps together the contradictions of reality, while offering a ray of hope, a light at the edge of darkness.

 

Teaser Stanche Mani: https://vimeo.com/381648327

Concept & choreography: Lisa Da Boit / Text and voice: Sophie de Beer / Interpretation:  Lisa Da Boit and Sophie de Beer / Visual universe: Natalia Blanch / Live music: Sofiane Remadna / Lights: Yoris Van den Houte / Direction assistant: Rudi Galindo / Promotion: Frank Barat, Anne Golaz. A creation of Giolisu, in coproduction with Théâtre de la Vie. With the support of Théâtre Marni, Grand Studio, la Roseraie, Centre Garcia Lorca & Espace Magh. PREMIERE - 12 > 16.11.2019 at 20:00 - Théâtre de la Vie, Brussels

 

Réparation 

Réparation is a sewn drawing I made for the performance Stanche Mani (a creation of the Giolisu danse company).The energy and fluidity of the dance movement was captured in India ink on rolls of rice paper. The dancer damaged and torn the paper. They had to be repaired, stitched up, to create an "open" structure, constantly patched up.

 

Réparation, Indian ink and oil painting on rice paper, hand sewn, 350 x 300 cm, 2019.

View of the installation at Firm Artlab, 2022.