L'envers de l'ordinaire (The Flipside of Ordinary) is an exhibition that brings together two artists: Marianne Berenhaut (1934, Brussels) and Hana Miletić (1983, Zagreb). No doubt owing to the generation gap between them, the two major artists of the Belgian scene have never had the opportunity to exhibit together.
Marianne Berenhaut is a sculptor whose approach has flourished since the 1960s through a multitude of gestures (firstly, casting, followed by collage and assemblage). In her sculptures, objects – found on the street or in second-hand stores – are superimposed, covered or rest one on top of the other. In her artworks, the objects of everyday life take the form of bodies or become flowers in electrical wiring or rugby scrums with empty bottles, among other things. In an interview, she said: “When I finish a piece, I observe that it always has something to do with people. I am often well aware that these are not people, and yet they are people..” Poupées poubelles: Ville et campagne (Dumpster Dolls: City and Country), or Pas de danse (Dance Steps), the artist always provides clues of these presences, thanks to evocative titles. “Since my work involves people, it is eminently political – or rather, political in a sense. Political in the sense that it is an integral part of society. In empathy with society.”
As for Hana Miletić, she uses the technique of jacquard fabric weaving to create an in-situ piece, as part of her ongoing series Untitled (Softwares). The intervention unifies the ground floor and first floor of the former synagogue of Delme around a single weft. It destabilises the symmetry of the venue and symbolically interrupts the historical gender divide. The installation of curtains designed by Miletić reproduce the grid indicating the transparency of video editing and photography software. A radical break with binary logic within the mechanical weave – one that is partly free, rather than a schema of zeros and ones – challenges the repetition of a normative tradition of textile production. The work pays tribute to the contributions of women in the field of computer science, particularly to mathematician Ada Lovelace, who was inspired by the perforated cards used in mechanical jacquard weaving to develop the early computer programs.
Some of the historical and most recent works by Berenhaut can be glimpsed through Miletić’s installation, oscillating between opacity and transparency. The virtual space reproduced acts as a revelatory device, in a historically non-representative place. The title of the exhibition, L'envers de l'ordinaire (The Flipside of Ordinary), refers to this process. The objects are created through acts of repair and care. They reveal the effort required to sustain daily life – that of “reproductive labour”. The concept developed by the materialist feminist movement in the 1970s, especially the network campaigning Wages for Housework, describes the set of unpaid processes designed to keep human beings alive, such as cooking or education – tasks predominantly taken on by women.
In the nooks and crannies of the former synagogue of Delme, reflecting some of the cities that inspire them, the imaginative duo plays with sizes and proportions – between tallness and smallness, proximity and distance. Their works evoke the lowliness of pavements or the height of buildings that rise up against bodies and landscapes, a daily life shaped by technologies that construct our gaze, the technologies of social divisions in public space to which both artists respond through collective solidarity.
La synagogue de Delme
33, rue Poincaré
57590 Delme
France
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