Esmée
Bruins
Esmée Bruins
Project view
Project view
All of our memories are fragmented. We don’t truly recall the full experience of these moments but we link each fragment to another fragment to create a cohering memory. It’s only after critically looking at our full memories and noticing these (often visual) fragments that we’re able to truly look at the fragments by themselves. What do we see? Are these fragments like photographs, immovable and frozen in time? We can try and find an answer in the exhibition “Two Windows Opening Inwards”, where each work explores fragments of important memories of Esmée’s youth. From certain visual icons such as the Rabbit she once kept as a pet to more abstract material research about sun markings on curtains. Every part of this exhibition reminds me of existing scenes in regular day-to-day life. The kind of scenery we’d not even notice unless linked to important memories. Some fragments are rigid, resulting in works made from plaster, and some are more fluid which naturally navigated the memory to textile work. In this exhibition, it is necessary to look carefully. To not miss any details and to wonder about the qualities of the materials in use, because they refer to memories in a similar way as photographs. Separately, these works are part of a collaborative system of memories. Each work itself explores a different memory but when exhibited together form a whole. As an overwhelming sense of nostalgia or perhaps a way to process the experience of growing up.
Text by Noah van de Wetering
Text by Noah van de Wetering