For the fourth segment of the series “Matters of Concern | Matières à panser” at La Verrière, the Brussels art space of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, curator Guillaume Désanges presents a solo exhibition by the artist Minia Biabiany (b. 1988, Guadeloupe).

“Since the early 2010s, Minia Biabiany has developed a corpus of great subtlety, in sculpture, graphic work and film, characterised by its economy of form and its proliferation in space. Her eclectic palette of materials (cotton, wood, plastic, metal rods, bamboo, banana leaves, salt, chalk, and more) is orchestrated with crystalline precision, like a series of clues set down in response to a guiding narrative that is otherwise unseen. And yet this ethereal work – suggestive rather than directive, with a discreet elegance that transcends its (literally) raw materials – may be seen as ‘loaded’, too. It is haunted by issues of identity connected to the history of Guadeloupe and the Caribbean as a whole (the artist’s home region, where she continues to work and reflect). Here, the weight of this geopolitical legacy, marked by French cultural assimilation, colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, is conveyed in the sounds, materials, words and infinitesimal gestures that constitute her practice. The magnetism of her work, more sensual than discursive, more poetic than overtly political, resides in a ‘memory of things’ comparable to the memory of water: an indelible yet transparent mark, an afterglow that shines through the surface of objects and may be reactivated in the service of creative catharsis.” — From the text by Guillaume Désanges

Installation The unity is submarine by Minia Biabiany, exhibition “In the Belly of the Whale”, 2016, Witte de With, Rotterdam (Netherlands). Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Installation The unity is submarine by Minia Biabiany, exhibition “In the Belly of the Whale”, 2016, Witte de With, Rotterdam (Netherlands). Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Minia Biabiany, Leyendo plantas, 2015, mixed media. Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Minia Biabiany, Leyendo plantas, 2015, mixed media. Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Minia Biabiany, detail of the installation Murmuran que el cabello es la memoria, 2017, black-and-white digital photograph. Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Minia Biabiany, Sex sintaxis, 2015, mixed media. Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Minia Biabiany, jou wouvé, the beginning II, 2017, colour video, 3.21 min. Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Still from Minia Biabiany’s video, Blue Spelling, a change of perspective is a change of temporality, 2017, 2.22 min. Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Still from Minia Biabiany’s video, flè a poyo, restauring the body, 2015, 5.50 min. Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Still from Minia Biabiany’s video, flè a poyo, restauring the body, 2015, 5.50 min. Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Minia Biabiany, Toli Toli, 2018, colour video, 10 min. Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany

Portrait of Minia Biabiany. Courtesy of the artist © Minia Biabiany Courtesy of the artist © Nicolas Colón

Concurrent with the exhibition “Musa Nuit” at La Verrière, Brussels (Belgium), Minia Biabiany presented “J’ai tué le papillon dans mon oreille” at MAGASIN des Horizons, Grenoble (France).

Images courtesy Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.