For her first solo show at a UK institution, the Brussels-based Beninese artist Pélagie Gbaguidi (b. 1965) presents De-Fossilization of the Look curated by Daria Khan.
Brussels-based Beninese artist Pélagie Gbaguidi’s practice spreads across painting, drawing, performance and social practice. For her first solo show at a UK institution, the artist presents works from the series De-fossilization of the Look (2018) created in dialogue with Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto (after 1457). This early Renaissance depiction of the Madonna features unorthodox iconography: the pregnant Madonna’s dress is undone, exposing an undergarment; her face and posture convey fatigue. Gbaguidi scrutinises this imagery via a series of automatic drawings and paintings, pondering on the depiction of sacralised motherhood and woman’s place and agency in the patriarchal society.
Gbaguidi subverts the Renaissance tradition of linear perspective with a fisheye lens: she grasps all at the same time, enveloping her subjects and dissecting them into fibres, as if looking at them from within. The artist states: “I draw without perspective: my perspective is a perspective of a child, of a bird, of an insect, and of a fish”.
The exhibition also features works on paper from Les Vieilles (2016) (Old Women) series, consisting of 15 drawings and a new site-specific painting on the back wall of the gallery. This series reflects on the invisibility of elderly women in society, their untold stories and unacknowledged wisdom. Cherishing her connection to animistic and matriarchal perceptions of the world, intrinsic to Benin’s pre-colonial culture, Gbaguidi transmits an animated spirit of inherited ancestral and contemporary impressions.
In the first floor room of Mimosa House, Gbaguidi invites visitors to take part in the making of a collective gesture by choosing a piece of fabric and stitching a button to it, as a symbol of collective repair.
At the preview, between 6:30–8:30pm on Thursday 22 June, the exhibition will be activated through a vocalisation by the mezzo-soprano Clotilde Van Dieren.
