#33 Borders of Nothingness - On the Mend - Margaret Lansink

16 - 19 May 2019

Special Exhibition @ IBASHO during the Antwerp Art Weekend

This 4-day special exhibition shows the ongoing series 'Borders of Nothingness' and 'On the Mend' by Dutch photographer Margaret Lansink (b. 1961).

The first part of the exhibition 'Borders of Nothingness' was created during Margaret's Artist in Residence in Onishi, Japan in 2017.

In the infinite flow of everything, people come and go in our lives. While the presence of some can be so subtle that we hardly register when it begins or ends, with others it's far clearer: they enter, or leave, with a bang.

In 'Borders of Nothingness', Lansink dwells in the transitional ambiguity of her adult daughter's decision to suspend contact with her, photographing landscapes and nude women whose disappearing presence raises the same haunted question: is this the moment you were gone?

As time passed, Lansink and her daughter reconnected to investigate whether their break could be mended. Lansink then began to revisit and reinterpret 'Borders of Nothingness' in a physical practice that mirrored their emotional efforts of healing. Working from the Japanese practice of repairing ceramics with gold leaf, she combines her images, severs them, and mends their breaks with gold leaf to put hope into the possibility of a bond that is stronger and more beautiful because it had once been broken.

Especially for this exhibition Margaret has created a Japanese style handbound book 'Borders of Nothingness - On the Mend' printed on 120 gs Washi paper. A small paper collage, mended with 23 Kt. goldleaf, is mounted in the signed book. The book comes in an edition of 50 copies and will be released during the vernissage.