Hessie’s Soft Resistance at La Verrière
The Poésie Balistique (“Ballistic Poetry”) season has kicked off at La Verrière with Soft Resistance, a solo exhibition of Hessie (b. 1936), her first in Belgium. Curator Guillaume Desanges invited the Caribbean-born artist, who has been living and working in France since 1962, to the Brussels art space run by Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.
A black female practitioner in what is still a predominantly white, male art world, Hessie sublimates her experience as a migrant and mother of five in her work. The painstakingly stitched abstract pieces immediately evokes postminimalist art from the 1960’s and 70’s, when she started to produce these works. The subtle, tactile surfaces belie the labor-intensive stitching process, achieving an organic effect through the delicate, handmade allusion to the infinite. While Hessie herself has been known to call her practice “Survival Art”, Soft Resistance shows that she has thrived as a representative of the French feminist movement of the 1970’s.
Articles you also might like
The Keramis Museum, La Louvière, Belgium presents The Dark Object of the Brightest Desires, a duo-exhibition by Nicolas Delprat and Rachel Labastie on view through March 2, 2025.
The Horta Museum invited five designers to decorate the walls of Horta’s house, using velvet. Their interventions will be on display from 13 September 2024 to 30 June 2025.
Between September 12th-30th, design takes over the European capital with more than 100 events that showcase Belgian excellence and creativity.
The Muzeum Susch presents Tapta: Flexible Forms, the first large-scale retrospective exhibition outside of Belgium of the Polish-born, Belgian based artist Maria Wierusz-Kowalska, known as Tapta.