Clarisse M
‘Apparentia’
Curated by Dirk Braeckman
08.05.2025 — 24.05.2025
With Apparentia, PLUS-ONE Projects presents the first solo exhibition of the photographic work of Clarisse M (Ghent, 2004 – 2023).
The exhibition was curated by Dirk Braeckman, her artistic mentor and one of the founders of the Clarisse M Foundation. After a long and difficult struggle with mental health, Clarisse M took her own life, under guidance, at the end of 2023. She leaves behind an impressive visual body of work that offers an intimate glimpse into a highly complex inner world and a fragile process of self-development. Clarisse translates her ongoing search for beauty and meaning into enigmatic self-portraits and abstracted fragmentary images of texture and matter, printed in graphic black and white. Through her distinctive use of long exposure times, she depicts herself as a dreamlike apparition that never fully materializes. In a motion devoid of grip, her body is spun, doubled, and distorted into a swirling apparentia. The movement suggests a dizziness in which all reason is cast aside, and both Clarisse and the image fall into freefall—where mind and matter merge.
In Clarisse’s refusal to conform to the photography’s definitive arrest of movement and time lies her experience and spirit. A form of creative resistance against the norm. In this way, Clarisse not only creates a personal mental space but also a resonant chamber where we, as viewers, can let our own imagination, identity, and emotional world echo. The Latin titles she gives her works open a suggestive line to classical stories with tragic protagonists and archetypal plots. Clarisse M thus places her personal quest within the broader human search for the condition humaine. Because we too seek answers to the lure and fear of finitude.
Apparentia presents a first selection from the intriguing work of Clarisse M, an exceptional artistic talent who had only just begun to glimpse the light of life—and made us dream of so much more.
Clarisse M, Negatio, 2023, Photo Rag Ultra Smooth mounted on dilite, 40 × 60 cm
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Clarisse M (°2004 - † 2023) lived and worked in Ghent, Belgium
in her short life as an exceptionally talented visual artist, primarily worked with the medium of photography. In her continuous search for beauty, she created an impressive artistic body of work. She found recognition and connection with Dirk Braeckman, who became her mentor.
Clarisse’s life was marked by psychological suffering. She fought with all her strength to keep living, but ultimately lost the unequal battle. Despite her young age, she was granted euthanasia after a long and intense process due to unbearable psychological suffering. She felt it was important to emphasize that she did not choose euthanasia, but that she and the attending doctors ultimately saw no other way out.
After a long trajectory of hospitalizations in psychiatric institutions and years of inadequate and traumatizing care, she finds her path through photography. A new world opens up for her. Her inspiration is inexhaustible; her talent, unlike anything her teachers have seen before.
During that period, she meets Dirk Braeckman, who is so deeply impressed by her exceptional talent that he himself asks to mentor her. A unique, creative bond develops between them, one in which they inspire each other.
With her extraordinarily sensitive soul, her moral refinement, and her constant longing and search for beauty, Clarisse creates—in a very short time, often during sleepless nights—an impressive and intriguing artistic body of work.
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Exhibition: 08.05.2025 - 24.05.2025
PLUS-ONE Projects
Vlaamsekaai 73
2000 Antwerp (BE)
