PERFORMANCE: Grace Ellen Barkey

In the framework of An exhibition with an audio script by Sarah Demeuse and Wendy Tronrud, as well as a soundtrack by Mario García Torres in collaboration with Sol Oosel, artist, choreographer, and performer Grace Ellen Barkey is invited to further explore and interpret the core themes of this exhibition– dropping out, retreat, refusal.

For a duration of two days, and through multiple installations, Barkey invites the visitor to enter her sensuous world. Visual and performative interventions offer, by words of the artist, “a claustrophobic impression of the idea that man is mortal, and nature lasts forever. Beauty is only beautiful when it is transient. Only then does it gain history."

For the recent works shown at Witte de With, Barkey collects, films, and photographs flowers and leaves from her small garden in Brussels and the immediate surroundings. When our world shrinks, our experience of it intensifies. A flower bursting with life becomes overwhelming. We are blinded by its beauty. At night, in the moonlight, we dare to look at it once more. Glistening in the twilight, we say it farewell.