The Exhibition Leaves

The Exhibition Leaves is “a project on the pretences, illusion and speculation surrounding what makes an artwork” according to Shelly Nadashi (b. 1981, lives and works in Paris). A new set of her works is on show including a short film about a crow accused of theft, in which, deep in a forest, a lawyer reads its indictment. One cannot speak while the other is blind; both convoke the archetypes of moral fables such as Aesop or La Fontaine, and are entwined with the clichéd language of the law or post-industrial economics: the artist’s texts twist her wild imagination together with set phrases. The Exhibition Leaves is a fine play on words, on the appearance and disappearance of the work of art. The core of this project focuses on a series of ceramic tree leaves, opaque masks, tribal totem poles or stationary sculptures. It explores the tension between the physical dimension of the space in which the viewer and the works meet, and other spaces in which the works circulate in a more ethereal fashion.

Through a variety of supports including film, performance, the art of puppetry and the manufacture of objects, Shelly Nadashi expresses her interest in the value of things and people, symbolic value and market value, as well as the ambivalent position of the artist in society, seen as “entertainer”. She imagines situations which at first seem absurd and include archetypic characters – a menacing Russian panderer, a hypnotic masseuse, a dynamic executive preparing a soup – which she activates during her performances, placing the viewer in a possibly unpleasant situation. Her works take a look at the creative yet alienating power of speech and show “how language can produce a choreography and tempo” (1) while still allowing space for interpretation.

(1) Interview on 28 July 2013, with Shelly Nadashi, Francis McKee and Remco de Blaaij

Shelly Nadashi is a resident artist at the Pavillon Neuflize OBC.

Curator: Daria de Beauvais