Sol Calero: ISLA / Family Fictions

Sol Calero
ISLA
Solo exhibiton
Curated by Carla Donauer

ISLA is Sol Calero’s first institutional solo exhibition in Belgium. For Kunsthal Extra City, the artist developed a new, site-specific installation. This sculptural pavilion, an autonomous structure, has links to the eclectic architectural environment of the premises, a former industrial laundry. Evidence of the physical labour previously carried out on the site remains present in the space. ISLA is a structure that can potentially be activated and “used,” with benches and chairs to sit on and a platform to climb on.

The installation combines previous aspects of Calero’s site-specific spatial approach, her architectural interventions and her affinity with painting. But now, for the first time, the artist has realised a pavilion inside of an exhibition space. Formally the structure creates a rough notion of the abandoned and is reminiscent of partially collapsed houses or unfinished constructions. The exhibition space is unheated, in contrast with Calero’s warm and colourful palette; this juxtaposition lends subtext to the work’s presentation of stereotypical Western ideas about the American continent. This way, the work functions as a template for the clichés of South American imagery that in turn reflects the exoticised Western narrative. The aspect of heat is used as a material, which takes its own space in another spatial dimension. In this way, heat (or its absence) gains the captivating and seductive quality of sculpture.

The rough texture and composition of the work is reminiscent of the decay of a disused home, left abandoned for an unknown reason. ISLA abstracts the connections between architecture, community and socio-cultural structures and in doing so calls their utopian and dystopian notions into question. How does architecture symbolise the state of a community? ISLA calls into question the symptoms and parallelism of social dissolution and architectural decay. With her colourful yet positive imagery, Calero designates ruin as a symbol of fragility.

Realized with the generous support of Goethe Institut.

 

Family Fictions
Group exhibition
Curated by Laura Herman and Charlotte Van Buylaere
With works by åyr, Lucy Beech, Gluklya, Kalup Linzy, Valérie Mannaerts, Sophie Nys, Alice Wong & Aryan Javaherian

What is the significance of family today? Once viewed as the cornerstone of society and vital to our identity, the concept of family is increasingly becoming a product of our own imagination. In the city we focus our attentions inwards and on the spontaneous connections we establish with others. The group exhibition Family Fictions looks at how media, architecture and technology influence our vision of these social groupings, from the temporary to the more enduring. Does the term “family” still suffice to describe our contemporary forms of relationships in all their complexity and dynamism?

Family Fictions brings together artists who seek to investigate, destabilise or reinvent the concept of family. In their own ways, the artists approach this construct as a fiction, based on the exception, because the norm seems increasingly exclusive to many people. The point of departure for this group exhibition is the idea that we should dare to separate love and family, to reclaim a social territory for “post-familial relations,” to explore new ways of relating to one another.