Joëlle Tuerlinckx: El caso de l(a casa) museo(a)

The Museum of Contemporary Art of The Basque Country, Artium Museoa, presents El caso de l(a casa) museo(a), an exhibition by the Belgian artist Joëlle Tuerlinckx (Brussels, Belgium, 1958).

The exhibition, curated by Beatriz Herráez and Catalina Lozano, director and chief curator of the Museum respectively, is articulated as a sort of disconcerting retrospective. It brings together historical works alongside recent proposals that, in turn, are traces and records of previous projects. Tuerlinckx deals with this retrospective approach to her work by revisiting her book Moments d’espace (Secession, Vienna, 2011), reconsidering her own practice, the strangeness of the coming together of different temporalities, and the splitting of the subjects of enunciation in order to allow further viewpoints and centres. Through this methodology, a double subject emerges, both “I” ―the author― and “you”―the reader, the visitor (or the character visitore that plays an important part in this setting orchestrated by the artist): a subject “I” and its shadow. It is between them that the interpreters appear, both as translators and readers.

Tuerlinckx’s practice results from systems of work in which different temporalities and spatialities are summoned and reanimated in given spaces, including her studio. In this regard, her production is both absolutely site-specific and radically abstract by challenging us on notions as ubiquitous as time and space. By assuming and transforming the legacy of conceptual art, performance, practices stemming from institutional critique and sound installations, the artist displaces and transforms museum protocols and devices and engages the teams of the places she intervenes, turning their roles, words and everyday gestures in raw material of her production.

After several visits to the museum and extensive conversations with its teams, Tuerlinckx, in collaboration with the artist Christoph Fink (Ghent, Belgium, 1963), constructed a symphony that acts as a network of echoes and resonances where the different subjects/actors interact or overlap.

The title of the exhibition refers to domestic (la casa / the house) and institutional (museo(a) / museum) spaces as two dimensions between which the show oscillates. They reveal the ways in which Tuerlinckx tackles her work―as case studies―, while acting as stages where a daily theatre takes place with subtle appearances: shadows, reflections, sounds that also make up the material reality of this ever-changing, off-centre space.

The project has been supported by Wallonie Bruxelles and has been developed in collaboration with Kanal, Brussels.