An exhibition that dismantles the prejudices against "feminine art". The exhibition ? whose title is taken from a book by Marguerite Duras ? highlights the work of 12 female artists nourished by a creative process that tends to tie artistic development to personal experience. The chapters of the exhibition open the comprehension and the gaze one can have on female art. And although there are sometimes feminist works, it is not in the traditional stereotype and combative way or as a revendication, but rather in a more sensitive way. The purpose is to reveal the link that unites art and life in all its complexity and richness.0The key question ?how does art allow to connect our body and our inner world? permits to dismantle the prejudices against "feminine art" as it transcends a gendered approach and doesn?t imprison the creation of women artists.00Exhibition: Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels, Belgium (09.12.2021 - 13.03.2022)
"De jonge Adolf Hitler werd tot tweemaal toe afgewezen voor een opleiding aan de Kunstacademie van Wenen. Door geldnood gedwongen werd hij 'broodschilder'. Hitler was geen begenadigd schilder, kunstenaar was hij wel. Zo ontwierp hij de partijsymboliek, maakte de bouwtekening voor de Berghof- zijn huis in de Beierse Alpen creëerde decors voor opera's, en maakte met grote precisie schetsen voor bouwwerken en monumenten. Hitlers smaak op gebied van kunst was aartsconservatief. In zijn ogen waren moderne kunstenaars 'kladschilders' en had de degeneratie van de kunst in 1910 ingezet. Eenmaal aan de macht liet hij honderden werken van progressieve kunstenaars uit musea verwijderen. Aanvankelijk kocht hij werk van Duitse schilders uit de 19e eeuw aan, later ook van oude meesters. Hij wilde zijn collectie onderbrengen in het nog te bouwen Führermuseum in Linz. Zijn verzamelwoede kende letterlijk en figuurlijk geen grenzen.". - [Provided by publisher]
One hundred years after the founding of the École Coloniale Supérieure in Antwerp, the adjacent Middelheim Museum invites Sandrine Colard, researcher and curator, to conceive an exhibition that probes silenced histories of colonialism in a site-specific way. For Colard, the term Congoville encompasses the tangible and intangible urban traces of the colony, not on the African continent but in 21st-century Belgium: a school building, a park, imperial myths, and citizens of African descent. In the exhibition and this adjoining publication, the concept Congoville is the starting point for 15 contemporary artists to address colonial history and ponder its aftereffects as black flâneurs walking through a postcolonial city.
Due to the multitude of perspectives and voices, this book is both a catalogue and a reference work comprised of artistic and academic contributions. Together, the participating artists and invited authors unfold the blueprint of Congoville, an imaginary city that still subconsciously affects us, but also encourages us to envision a decolonial utopia. - Un siècle après la fondation de l'École coloniale supérieure à Anvers, le musée voisin du Middelheim invite la chercheuse et curatrice Sandrine Colard à créer une exposition qui interroge les histoires silencieuses du colonialisme à la lumière du site. Le mot Congoville désigne les traces visibles et invisibles de la colonie, non pas sur le continent africain, mais au cœur de la Belgique actuelle : un bâtiment scolaire, un parc, des mythes impérialistes et des citoyens d'origine africaine. À travers l'exposition et la publication qui l'accompagne, le concept devient pour 15 artistes contemporains prétexte à explorer en tant que « flâneurs » noirs la ville postcoloniale, à questionner le passé colonial et son impact.
Par sa diversité de perspectives et de voix, ce livre est aussi un catalogue et un ouvrage de référence réunissant des articles tant académiques qu'artistiques. Ensemble, les artistes et les auteurs impliqués déplient la carte de Congoville, une ville imaginaire qui nous tient encore sous sa coupe à notre insu, mais nous encourage aussi à imaginer une utopie décoloniale.
Avec des contributions de: Pieter Boons, Sandrine Colard, Filip De Boeck, Bas De Roo, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Sorana Munsya & Léonard Pongo, Herman Van Goethem, Sara Weyns, Nabilla Ait Daoud
Artistes participants: Sammy Baloji, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Maurice Mbikayi, Jean Katambayi, KinAct Collective, Simone Leigh, Hank Willis Thomas, Zahia Rahmani, Ibrahim Mahama, Ângela Ferreira, Kapwani Kiwanga, Sven Augustijnen, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Elisabetta Benassi, Pélagie Gbaguidi
Since the Middle Ages artists from the Low Countries were known to be fond of travelling, as Guicciardini in his "Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi" (Antwerp, 1567) and Karel van Mander in his 1604 "Schilderboeck", already noticed. Much more mobile than their colleagues from other European countries, many Netherlandish artists spread all over Europe; a remarkable number among them achieved great fame as court artists, as the careers of Claus Sluter in Burgundy, Anthonis Mor in Spain, Bartholomeus Spranger or Adriaen de Vries in Prague, Giambologna and Jacob Bijlevelt in Florence demonstrate. Moreover, they exerted considerable influence on the artistic production of their time. Nevertheless most of them sank into oblivion soon after they died. Dutch art history neglected them for a long time as they did not fit into the traditional canon of the Low Countries, nor were they adopted by the art histories of their new homelands. This new NKJ volume is an attempt to change this
Marine painting, paintings of ships and the sea, is a four hundred year old traditional Dutch art discipline. In the nineteenth century the genre had a special artistic prestige and status. This study explores the background, training, studio practice, stylistic development and subject matters of the Dutch nineteenth-century marine painter. A Reference List of Marine Painters, which is a new overview of the true specialists in the genre in this period, is added. The key question is how marine painting was looked at by the marine painters themselves, their fellow painters at the artists associations, in art theory and in art criticism. It turns out that within Dutch art circles throughout the nineteenth century, marine painting was perceived as a bearer of national pride. By placing the genre in a broader cultural-historical context it reveals how marine painting, together with the glorification of maritime history, was embedded in nationalist ideology.
