Ara Méndez Murillo (b. 1997, Cordoba, ES) lives and works in Brussels. She finished her Master in painting at La Cambre, Brussels, in 2022.
We did a first duo-exhibition with her work in our venue in Lovenjoel. This second show is titled ‘The other team’. In her words : ‘We divide the world into categories that we associate with symbols. Words like ‘left’, ‘centre’ or ‘right’; physical elements like a flag, serve to associate heterogeneous groups of people with concrete ideas, determining in a few seconds our position towards the other. To what extent do we consciously belong to our teams? If those in which I include myself are made up of complex and nuanced people, the other is almost always an abstract mass. It is easier to develop this kind of humiliating and puerile contempt against an unknown [removed];
Maria Kley ([removed], Tokyo, JP) lives and works in Brussels. She studied fashion design at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem (NL). Her artistic practice was preceded by several years of working in the fashion industry. From 2018-2019 Kley was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam.
‘The Animals’ is a sculptural series made with medical gauze and based on drawings by Maria Kley’s son Rune during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. In Locomotion, these drawings were partially animated in a stop-motion projection inhabiting the gallery space. The ensemble is completed by the diptych Inhale, Exhale also composed with medical gauze and reminiscent of the conventional mouth masks so characteristic of the pandemic.