For her first solo exhibition in Brussels and in Belgium, the Franco-Mexican artist Carmen Mariscal presents a series of works on the theme of illusions and disillusions linked to romantic relationships. Through a collection of photographic and video material as well as installations and sculptures, this exhibition plunges us into a multi-sensory questioning on fundamental themes.
The exhibition The Cemetery of Love brings together pieces from the series The Handcuffed wife (La Esposa Esposada) (2018) and Chez Nous (Padlock House) (2018-2020), both of which explore the pitfalls that surround romantic relationships. To the illusions that cradle us from childhood on the myth of love and marriage respond the weight of traditions and the painful awakening in the face of a sometimes-harsher reality. Mariscal then examines questions of memory, gender, construction of identity: Is love a link? Or a chain? Should it enclose, mark freedom or belonging and possession?
Mariscal questions the objects...and symbols of daily life to question their meaning, often more ambiguous than it seems: from the wedding dress to the home-home, through practices of couples hanging a padlock in the public space to demonstrate their attachment, these are all objects that arouse hope as well as alienation.
« For many years, the work of Mexican artist Carmen Mariscal has borne witness to the concerns of a sensitive and committed woman artist […]. Family memory and personal life, social awareness resulting from a reflection in direct contact with current events, so many sources that fully irrigate her work and determine its narrative foundations. » said art historian Christine Frérot.
The Cemetery of Love, which is also the title of a central video installation in this exhibition, takes its name from the landfill where the City of Paris stored the padlocks that were removed from Parisian bridges. The artist, to refer to this place kept secret, then got the habit of calling it in a playful tone « The Cemetery of Love », seeing the padlocks, placed with love by couples in the city now rusting in the open. The place thus symbolizes the place where dreams and illusions shatter. The artist then explores the memory of objects revealing stories which, between forgetting and reparation, allow a lucid awakening as to the nature of the relations of possession and domination.
Entrada actualizada el el 19 feb de 2021
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