Exhibitions

NOMADS

2018 - Present

42 Polaroids

Brussels, for me, has never been a city of stone; it is a sequence of temporary addresses. Twelve times in eight years, I have taped up boxes and handed over keys, turning departure into the primary rhythm of my life. NOMADS emerges from this restlessness. It is a photographic archive of the transitions that define my existence, using the raw, chemical stain of the Polaroid to catch the fleeting nature of the "goodbye."

The ritual is precise: at the moment of parting, my move, a friend’s, or a brief connection reaching its limit, we hug. A camera clicks twice: one from my shoulder, one from theirs.

These dual images document a fundamental truth: no two people inhabit the same moment in the same way. One frame might catch the white-knuckle grip of a hand, while the other sees only the blur of a coat or a turned head. The resulting diptych materializes the "blind spot" that remains between us, even when physically fused in an embrace.

This series honors the shifting life of a relationship. A farewell acts as a prism, forcing a bond to reveal its true nature. Some connections inevitably thin out with distance, their cycle complete; others remain suspended, unchanged by geography. Some transform entirely.

NOMADS does not claim to solve the mystery of these changes. Instead, it records the attempt to bridge the distance. It suggests that while we can never fully enter another’s reality, the act of capturing that specific, unrepeatable collision of two lives is the closest we ever get to a shared truth.

Portraits

2023

Archival Pigment Print
Variable Sizes
You Are Here (Group Exhibition)
The Platform/ Gallery, Antwerp

This series delves into the enigmatic discovery of an old family photo album, shedding light on its neglected contents and the compelling visual narrative that emerges from its abandoned state.

Instead of human subjects, the album's physical attributes take on a newfound significance, becoming the focal point of the visual narrative; such as mold growth, water stains, broken frames, and faded linings, which now take center stage as subjects in their own right.

Through the use of analog medium format photography, each empty frame becomes a reproduction, capturing the essence of the album's silent yet evocative story. This visual exploration seeks to evoke a sense of intrigue and contemplation, inviting viewers to engage with the album's forgotten history and the significance of its neglected imagery.

Prospective Pour le 22e Siècle

2023

Off-set Print
70 x 80 cm
Edition of 300
CCINQ Gallery, Brussels

Prospective: noun, concerning the future evolution of society, permitting elements of forecasting.

In 1967, François Bayle and Pierre Henry created ‘Prospective 21e Siècle’, a collection devoted to musique concrète and electroacoustic, electronic, and avant-garde composers for the French label Philips. Fifty-five years later, we invited Vica Pacheco and Miguel Rózpide to reflect together on a possible 22nd century prospective.

At the end of the sixties, the future was often fantasised about. Future-oriented thinking was the norm and 'art music' was reaching a new audience who were already aware of avant-garde sounds and improvisation by artists like Soft Machine and Frank Zappa.

Between 1967 and 1977, the collection was characterised by the idea of an art resolutely centred on anticipation and modernity with a desire to understand and question the future. As part of an experimental process, we asked visual artist Miguel Rózpide to think of a unique image that would be published as posters. During these 3 evenings of performance, the audience is invited to take the print home with them as a mark of a moment in time.

Miguel Rózpide's visual approach lies in a place where the difference between environment and subject is defined. His images pay particular attention to what happens there, they enrich the ordinary and undoubtedly evoke an atmosphere, whether warm or sterile. There are places, objects, people or animals, and colours that envelop them. The palette is restricted, sometimes even sombre, and the images are realistic whilst flirting with abstraction. In Rózpide's work —as in the colour field painting movement— colour is freed from its figurative functions and invites itself into the frame as a subject.

Here, Miguel Rózpide’s image is quite different, at least in its initial appearance. The subject is an unplugged incubator, placed in a neutral grey space, under the sharp lights of a photography studio.

This is an industrially-formatted image; it's timeless but dated, inhabiting a formal dimension where the object is the photograph. It evokes a certain idea of a consumer society where "beauty is born from the balance between form and function" (Formes Utiles - UAM).

Is this "neutral" proposed by Rózpide evoking a kind of "not yet", a thought at the edge of language, a superposition of matching tones?
What does this incubator, which protects the baby from the cold because it is not yet mature enough to regulate its temperature, say to us? What does this tone-on-tone tell us?

No matter what Vica Pacheco's sources of inspiration and concerns are, she definitely has a taste for hybridization. When producing sound installations, she likes to confront the most heterogeneous elements existing between field recordings and manipulated voices. She creates an atmosphere, a place transformed, a science fiction soundtrack and, of course, prospective research. The recognizable sounds speak to us as if they were the present being transformed. The story is this: we do not come from nothing, we remember. In an almost cinematographic narration we make a journey, we extrapolate, we move forward. It’s a journey to the beyond, between utopia, space-opera, and an alternate history.

For three days at CCINQ Vica Pacheco will experiment with detailed recordings in and around the incubator object-subject of the poster. Pacheco will freely imagine a world set apart by means of sound design, and will present the results of her research each evening. The three performances will bring conceptualism, confusion and recognition, and transforming art through the links between artists into question. The audience knows that it's not about the real world, it's about research that could lead us to an escape, to a better world.

Finally, viewers will be able to take the physical production home with them, allowing its reactivation and reconfiguration outside of CCINQ. They will also leave with an immaterial element, an echo of the world transformed into what it is not (or not yet), a distancing one can appreciate.

Written by Patrick Carpentier

From I to 0

2023

Archival Pigment Prints
30 x 30 cm / 70 x 90 cm
Sint-Lukas Galerie, Brussels

From 1 to 20 continues my exploration of my family archive, focussing on the system my grandfather used to organise it. He marked each slide with a number; slides sharing the same digit were never meant to be seen together, yet they now form unexpected pairs.

I have placed these slides in sequence, side by side. These pairings reveal fragile links between images once separated by years or geography. A landscape meets an airport; a domestic scene sits beside a fragment of travel. The logic of the archive becomes visible, but so does its unpredictability.

The book moves from one to twenty. The structure is methodical, yet the images create their own quiet narratives. To me, the archive is a place where order and chance overlap—where meaning is found in the gap between two unrelated photographs that happen to share the same handwritten mark.

For the First Time

2019

Archival pigment Print
40 x 40 cm
The Loop
Art Residency w/ Bonfire
Brussels, Blegium

The first time we experience something significant, it leaves a permanent mark. These initial encounters do more than just form a memory; they shape the lens through which we see everything that follows. I am interested in these "firsts" because they are the rawest moments of our lives—vivid, unrepeatable, and deeply imprinted.

In this project, I explore how these early experiences become the foundation of our personal history. They dictate our future decisions and quiet habits, often without us realising it. I want to look at how a single, fleeting event can become a permanent part of who we are, navigating the journey from the moment it happens to the way it is remembered.

I aim to capture that specific tension between the event itself and the lasting impression it leaves behind. By revisiting these starting points, I am investigating how our perceptions are built and how we carry these initial sparks with us as we move through the world.

The Repeated Image

2019

Piezography Print
Handmade oak frames & Museum Glass
30 x 40 cm
Antwerp, Blegium

In this group of works, I select photographs from my family archive that appear twice, or almost twice. They capture moments that repeat with only a tiny shift in time or a change in angle. To me, these variations reveal how memory actually works—not as a single, fixed point, but as a sequence of nearly identical moments, each carrying its own slight difference.

I have rephotographed each image and printed them using piezography to match the original tones of the archive. This process creates a precise copy of the photograph as it was found; that accuracy is important, as it highlights the delicate space between one version and the next.

I bring these near-repetitions into a dialogue with pairs of homophones—words that echo each other in sound but move apart in meaning. When combined with the twin images, the connection between looking and reading becomes more uncertain. Language slips between clarity and ambiguity, just as the photographs slip between sameness and change.

Across these five frames, I want to draw attention to the slight movements that shape our memory. It is an invitation to look at moments that repeat but never truly match, and to the meanings that appear when two almost identical things are placed side by side.