Dear Yves,
Exhibition at KIOSK, Ghent
Elen Braga, Sofia Caesar, Fernando Marques Penteado
22 Jan | 20 Mar 2022
Dear Yves, is an exhibition presenting works by Elen Braga, Sofia Caesar, and Fernando Marques Penteado. All three are Brazilian artists based in Belgium, yet their practice and works cannot be subject to a labeled reading in terms of national affiliation. More than a coherent group, they could be described as a bubble of contacts, a fluid crowd of porous connections and various insertions, not very different from the bubbles we have all had to establish with people around us during COVID. Instead of a systematic thread, formative school, or consistent consensus uniting the group, it is an affective assemblage of people with a loose shared culture and some references in common. Such approximations and discrepancies permeate the new body of works presented in the exhibition.
If nationality was one of the most important markers of belonging for people over the last centuries, in contemporary times it has become a more complicated concept. Other factors have also been brought to the fore and into discussion, such as gender and skin color. While artists, and the arts more generally, have been somehow prophetic in anticipating gazes and offering daring sensitivities around such categorizations and how to blur them, most of us still remain attached to national belonging. An interesting phenomenon happens with language, though. For instance, take nouns of assemblage: these are words that appear in the singular form to denote a group of individuals or objects—a litter, a herd, a troupe. It is probably not by chance that there are no nouns of assemblage to indicate groups of people from given nationalities. This might be the result of an acceptance to the fact that people move and migrate, changing who they are and how they perceive themselves and others in this process. Moving countries, one invariably acquires new habits while preserving the most subtle, unexpected, and intimate aspects brought from home throughout life.
In this sense, Dear Yves, is an exhibition occasioned by a desire to be together and experiment. Assuming direct address, as in a letter with no particular message to transmit beyond the desire to communicate, the show is a salutation for an imaginary Yves. It positions a common name in Belgium—common at least among a certain generation—as its addressee. Our fictional Yves could be that critic that writes for a Flemish art magazine. He could be the person after whom the song Ive Brussel by Jorge Ben Jor was written, as it happens, in remembrance of someone who affectionately hosted the singer in Brussels during one of his tours through Europe in the 1970s. He could alternatively be a psychoanalyst whom many foreign artists in Belgium have actually consulted during their sojourns in the country. The story of this psychoanalyst’s practice tells us many things about a bubble of contacts, but also about how physical displacement can entail a necessity not only for looking around, but for looking inside oneself.
Warmest regards,
Laila Melchior
Co-curated with Simon Delobel, KIOSK.
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