SEPTEMBER 8 - OCTOBER 29, 2023
ALMA SARIF
CHAUSSÉE DE FOREST 90, BRUXELLES
Without being the brightest mind alive one could assume that Parliament 2 came after Parliament 1. Indeed, Alma Sarif did host an exhibition called Parliament during the spring of the year 2020. The exhibits were photographs, also by William Gallab, shown in the window of the space. Those pictures presented a majority of owls' portraits, at least one hawk, one eagle and one unknown species. Even though they all fall under the birds of prey category, the title of the exhibition derived from the name given to a gathering of owls: a parliament.
For the most perverse amongst us who watched the evening news during the height of the coronavirus, either on the VRT or the RTBF, such gathering might sound like greetings from the past. The ghostly CODECO (comité de concertation – overlegcomité) and all the other local versions across the globe. It is perhaps worth remembering that a long time ago, in 2020, galleries and artist run spaces were closed. Hence the window's exhibition.
It is now September 2023 and the Brussels Gallery Weekend has been gathering its own birds of prey for nothing less than four official days (7.09 – 10.09). Alma Sarif's exhibition does not appear in the official New Exhibitions Contemporary Art leaflet. Yet it did have its opening on September the 7th. William Gallab wasn't a professional artist and the presence of his work during these official days is rather cheering. Not only that. One could also gather that William Gallab might share a family link with Monica Gallab. Although it is no longer visible on Alma Sarif's website, Monica Gallab and Joseph Kusendila are the people running the place. Several instances of such discretion take place within the exhibition itself and part of the pleasure in the visit is to ask questions to Monica and Joseph.
The exhibition is composed of two rooms. A small one and an even smaller one with a kind of short passage between them. In the first room, visible from the street, one can see five printed photographs of the same size : 43,8 x 59,4 cm. The paper isn't cut at the border of the image but leaves white strips of different width around it. They are not framed and seem to be attached to the wall thanks to double-sided tape. A sixth photograph, of still the same dimensions, is waiting in the left corner of the « even smaller room ». It shows mud-houses from North Africa. In the opposite corner of the room, in a strange contrast with the brown aridity of the houses, a flat screen is playing an entire tennis game happening on the very green lawn of Wimbledon. The game, which took place in 2001, opposes Pete Sampras to a 19 years old Roger Federer. A 3h41mns game which would be the only one they'd play against each other. One could call it historical. It's also around that year that the most recent photo shown in the exhibition was taken. The presence of Pete Sampras on a tennis court cruelly reminds us that 2001 didn't happen just yesterday. The oldest picture is from « circa 1975 ». The video doesn't appear on the sheet presenting the list of works. The sheet itself is behind a glass, hanged on the wall, and do not contain any additional text except for a rather cryptic + OL LMC +. The absence of paper to take home is something of a relief.
In the small transitory space between the two rooms one will encounter a sink stuck in the corner of two walls. A wall-mounted corkscrew is drilled into one of these walls. Its unexpected presence accompany the stainless steel tap above the sink. However, a more careful look will inform the visitor that it would be pretty difficult to get a bottle in the machine without breaking it against the sink. And even if that operation could be executed, it seems the handle of the corkscrew is too close to the tap to fully complete its lever movement. The corkscrew isn't on the list of works either.
Back in the small room with the five photos. One of them shows painted eggs standing straight in their egg-cups. On one of the eggs composing a family of four, a man is depicted. He is standing up, holding a drill with one hand while using the other to rest on a crutch. It is very tempting to accuse this man of the inoperative corkscrew drilling. The dark consequences of handiwork painted on egg-craft resonating with a useless wall-mounted corkscrew while Roger Federer's short ponytail is bouncing for 3 hours and 41 minutes. All this happening in the middle of the exhibition of a man who wasn't a professional photographer. This could either sound like something sad or a schoolboy prank (and yet I haven't mentioned anything about the blurry picture of a sea lion eating a fish at the zoo). The exhibition manages to avoid such pitfalls. As a matter of fact, the words « sadness » and « schoolboy prank » didn't occur to me until I started to describe the different elements of the exhibition. The way the photos, the video and the corkscrew have been put together deflects sadness into melancholy and prank into humor. It would therefore be fair to also acknowledge the work of Monica Gallab and Joseph Kusendila. A peculiar parliament of three.
Alma Sarif's curatorial work brings up two questions : how to deal with the work of someone who's no longer alive and whose concerns about the future of his photographs are unknown to us ? How to deal with the photographs of someone who happens to be your father ?
Bringing family business on the art scene is a slippery slope. We've certainly all been embarrassed by a failed tribute or a sentimental portrait of someone dear to the author. The family's muddle gets in the way and its extreme ordinariness is only sublimed in the head of the artist sharing their distorted image. In the case of Parliament 2 and William Gallab' photographs, it is perhaps the strange ordinariness that allows for the notable dodging of a collective embarrassment. The oddness of the images' mundane aspects lie in the fact they don't show a single human being in the flesh, although human activities pervade every image. Rather than human activities (and because such a word as « parliament » was used), we could call them elements of a society. The egg's family, the sea lion in the zoo, mud houses, a Mercedes car. Just like the « parliament of owls » lent a silent human voice to owls – or perhaps was it the owls' ex gratia gift of intelligence to humans? – Parliament 2 is giving a character to things. This would be done the same way memories eventually acquire a kind of materiality. After all, each photograph seems to have been taken either at home, on a holiday trip or at the local zoo. Literally : something to remember. And yet, without the date being given, it would be difficult to situate any of the photographs in time. The sea lion could be any sea lion in any zoo, the mud-houses seem old enough to have been photographed either yesterday or thirty years ago. The Mercedes car is a very common model which is still seen on the streets. As to the painted eggs, I can imagine people having been indulging in such activity for ever. While being part of a personal story, the something to remember is paradoxically more common and less dated than a historical tennis game that happened only 22 years ago.
This something brings us back to the question of how to deal with the work of a father who's no longer alive. Perhaps something is easier to deal with than someone. This is somehow what Monica Gallab and Joseph Kusendila did with Parliament 2. Both the symbolic and the literal inheritance cohabit in the exhibition. The photos' negative and the wall-mounted corkscrew are materials which had to be interpreted. The first ones come from a photographer's practice which spread at least from 1975 to 2001, while the latter might come from William Gallab kitchen's wall. Although only the pictures are presented as works of the exhibition, the corkscrew finds a legitimate presence in the space. One could also suppose the 43,8 x 59,4 cm format was decided together with the rest of the exhibition. It is perhaps even the first time these photographs were ever printed. The gathering of those elements would point in the direction of a joyful process and the care given to each work shows a rare moment of freedom. What I called a peculiar parliament of three earlier in the text is the antithesis of the official CODECO or the equally nightmarish gathering of the Brussels Gallery Weekend. The Parliament displayed by Alma Sarif do not gather experts. Its politics doesn't derive from universal suffrage. Its members are young and old, dead and alive.