Van Cauteren, Philippe | Paperback / softback | 08-1-2025 | 9789075679663

Splendid Isolation is a group exhibition that seeks to explore the particular conditions of life in solitude, and more precisely the creative impulses it can nourish. Bringing together an intergenerational and international group of artists, it centres on the artistic output that is induced by life under self-imposed or forced restrictions and foregrounds herein a number of positions. They include working conditions in which artists have been brutally cut off from their environment, have opted for a voluntary withdrawal or are bound to live in socially restricted conditions within their own community. Solitude can be either welcomed or dreaded as uninvited loneliness.

The introspection and concentration associated with a creative practice has occasionally motivated artists to withdraw from society. Living in silence can be experienced as an advantage or even as a necessary requirement to create. Today, any form of absolute isolation has become hard to imagine. In a globalised world with its deeply networked structures, life is imbued with interaction, visibility and connectedness. Under these circumstances, personal withdrawal and escapist desires often align with the choice for a more sustainable or even autarkic life or are inspired by a fundamental dissatisfaction with an unjust political system.

Through the segregation of individuals and groups based on geographical, political, cultural or even biological elements, on the other hand, some artists have been forced to create work in distressing situations. Whether captured in a mental space of their own, displaced or imprisoned by a political regime, or conditioned by soft powers that are socio-cultural or gendered, they cannot but call upon their individual, imaginary ability in order to resist inequality and oppression.

Splendid Isolation wants to bring together different stories and ensembles from artists with very diverse backgrounds. Works have been selected by Adrien Vescovi, Asim Abu Shakra, Danny Bergeman, David Byrd, Derek Jarman, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Eugenio Dittborn, Forrest Bess, Frank Walter, Hélène Amouzou, Hervé Yamguen, Hessie, Irma Blank, Judith Scott, Luciano Perna, Majd Abdel Hamid, Louise Bourgeois, Nalini Malani, Salam Atta Sabri, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Shuvinaai Ashoona, Zehra Dogan.