Premiere Gesamthof / A Lesbian Garden

 On 30 July 2022 Anne Reijniers and me screened our short film Gesamthof / A Lesbian Garden at Morpho in Antwerp. For this event we organized an exhibition by the poet and writer Johanna M Pas, her work brings gender, nature, ecology and being wild together in her poetry. A pop-up stand of LGBTQI+ bookstand Kartonnen Dozen offered feminist literature related to the art nature project Gesamthof, the lesbian garden in the same location. 

We would like to thank everyone who helped to make this empowering and caring event, a big thank you to the wonderful public who came the create a very diverse community for the evening and thank you Johanna M Pas, Terre & Sym, Morpho, Extra City and The Sore Spot Singers. 

If new screenings are planned, they will be announced on this website. A very warm thank you from both Anne Reijniers and me.

 

Photo by Miles Fischer, Anne Reijniers and me at the projection on the wall in the cinema by Morpho

 

Setting up the cinema at Morpho, it turned out the option to add more chairs was a good idea.

The exhibition with poetry by Johanna M Pas in the beautiful old refter of the monastery.

The poem by Johanna M Pas is also translated by her.

Johanna M Pas writes about gender, identity, nature, ecology and feeling home.

Terre organised the pop-up bookstand by Kartonnen Dozen, the oldest lgbtqi+ bookshop in belgium.

Lesbian Portraits

These small portraits are an ongoing series of an inclusive lesbian representation in paintings with both real persons and imagined faces. The paintings are made to visualise the diversity of a lesbian identity, they are the endless possibilities of who identifies as lesbian. By choosing to paint only the face and not the background or clothes the portraits are atemporal and could represent people from all times and diverse cultures. The series is by no means an atlas of people, rather I ask myself what might be a lesbian face, and the ongoingness in the portrait series is a never ending answer on this question. In reality there is no way to know if a person is lesbian only by the face, an neither to know if they are heterosexual. But the acceptance of multiple realities matters. These portraits are about a lesbian identity including cis, neutral and trans persons.

B.R.A.V.E. Art space with curator Leïla Bounoua and colleague Luna during Lesbien·x·nes.

 

Part of the series has been in the group exhibition Lesbien·x·nes at B.R.A.V.E. Art Space in Brussels from 24 March 2022 till 30 april 2022. All portraits listed below are 30x20cm oil on canvas, made in 2021 - 2022.

The Lesbian Gaze

Series of 10 oil paintings, 50x30cm, 2020

 

The portraits are deliberately not finished, the canvas is visible and the face is not complete. A lesbian identity can only be recognised when it is acknowledged, you only see what you know. Especially women who grow up with too little lesbian representation see themselves through the gaze of a cis-male, heterosexual society and environment. This creates voids in the recognition of who they are. These voids are reflected in the white canvas that is visible in the portraits.

 

These paintings were shown during the event of  'Intersectional Writing' at Kartonnen Dozen, the ever inspiring LGBTQI+ bookshop in Antwerp. While the subject of the paintings is the lesbian identity, it is important to stress that 'lesbian' is as inclusive as possible and the portraits difference in class and ethnicity. The lesbian shown here as portrait nr 7 is a trans woman and painted specifically as someone who did discover a lot about who she is, while in reality the representation for trans people is still to be improved.

 

 

to-no

To-no is a self-published book about words. The book contains the collected texts by the artists Yoko Enoki, Koyuki Kazahaya and Eline De Clercq. These short texts borrow words from Dutch, English and Japanese that can’t be exactly translated in order to explain what can’t be said in our own words. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘On Craftmanship’ this book is about sharing words between cultures.


To-no is an open project and continues to gather essays by artists who use their experiences in art and cultures to share words. The texts are both in English and in the first language of the artists. This first publication is an unedited limited edition of 25 handmade books riso printed at the Frans Masereel centre, none of the books are for sale. Instead the book functions as an artwork and can be added to exhibitions and when someone wants to read it they can find the entire text online:

https://annuel2.framapad.org/p/to-no-9z5p

 
About the authors:

Yoko Enoki is a painter who lives in Yokosuka, Japan. She got her bachelor in painting at Tsukuba university and her master in fine arts at Royal Academy of fine arts Antwerp.
 http://www.yokoenoki.com/

榎木陽子

横須賀在住の画家。筑波大学芸術専門学群洋画科卒業、アントワープ王立芸術アカデミーファインアート科修了。

 
Koyuki Kazahaya is a visual artist who lives in Brussels. She got her master in printmaking at Musashino Art university, 2nd master in fine arts at Royal Academy of fine arts Antwerp and Manama at Sint Lucas Antwerp. http://koyuki-kazahaya.blogspot.com/

風早小雪

ブリュッセル在住のビジュアルアーティスト。武蔵野美術大学油画科版画専攻修了、アントワープ王立芸術アカデミーファインアート科修了、セントルーカス大学リサーチプログラムManama修了。

 
Eline De Clercq is a painter who lives in Antwerp, she got her master in fine arts at KASK Ghent.

エリン・デ・クラーク

アントワープ在住の画家。ゲント王立芸術アカデミーファインアート科修了。