BECOMING ANCESTORS
07.02.26 – 28.06.26 ARGOS
20/20 VISION: ASH WEDNESDAY
20.02.26 ARGOS
CONFABULATIONS
MARIE ZOLMANIAN
21.02.26 – 17.05.26 WIELS
NAMELESS
NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN
25.10.25 – 01.03.26 WIELS
A silicon or rubber slice, mimicking the groves one might find in a face, appears exhausted. It gathers energy again, full weight on someone else's bare skin. Bruised faces. Joyful. People are drenched by accidental orange juice. There is rhythm in the air.
Shrove Tuesday makes room for confessions.
Argos’ new exhibit could not convince me yet (aside from Return to Al Ma’in, the dialogue between Salman Abu Sitta and Forensic Architecture, which reconstructs a Palestinian town wiped off the map. With my eyes fixed to the screen, a few tears even slipped out.) A week after visiting, on Ash Wednesday, I attend a micro-cinema evening in the center’s black box. Inspired by the theme of the show, we watch Tine Gun’s To Each its Own Mask. The film remains unnarrated. Instead, it offers a fast-paced diverse collage of carnivalesque practices. The footage gradually shifts towards acts of resistance and their use of disguise, characterization or narrative elements, before slowing down drastically. I mean, it becomes quite slow! It tests the audience’s attention. Even masking, it turns out, requires resources.
Clogs striking cobbled stones carry percussion with ease. Everyone is warming up for the spectacle this week. In the process of entering the void of the rhythm, however, repetition tends to generate a blank: an empty interval after the first troops appear and before they lure you into their trance. I dream about the moment before the Gilles find each other in a circle, or after, the hours before they start gathering their blood oranges. The streets are full, but at this time of the day people seem to sit things out, surfing on time that is finally presented to them in abundance. The city resembles those looks in a teen’s eyes; scanning, expectant, eagerly waiting for what is supposed to happen (not sure what, but I will be there!). They might get surprised to find out that “the wait” itself could be the most memorable.
That suspended time is captured “in one go” by Marie Zolmanian as a glistering glass of liquid. In Confabulations at WIELS, she presents a line of sleepers (or have they just drawn their last breath? I’m not quite sure. It feels rather domestic than definite.). The paintings are small. They stretch across the wall like a second skin, a cover, perhaps even a bandage for the white museum space. On the opposite side of the room, a single moving image appears, less aligned with the painterly world where Zolmamian often moves about. This “almost still life” gets unsettled only by the sun slowly shifting position and by (air?) bubbles in the glass. It feels at ease. One floor up, Nairy Baghramian leaves the seams visible on her pillow casts; while here, Zolamian’s video is edged by a corner of shade. I begin to read cut-off corners and excess material as springboards. Openings into a blanket of extra time.
Laura De Jaeger