Hadassah Emmerich

The show's title refers to the kaleidoscope, the visual artefact that mixes and rearranges several individual parts in unexpected compositions for the delight of the eye. The artist blends the words ‘collision’ and ‘kaleidoscope’ to imagine an instrument that becomes a tool for collision through its visual function. Associating this new word with the notion of creolisation, Emmerich proposes paintings as optical devices that present the world and its movements from a particular perspective in a singular moment.

Mingling references appropriated, unfolded, and processed throughout her career, Hadassah Emmerich includes allusions to her upbringing in the work. These presences go from the batik technique, whose principle she could be seen to use in reverse through the imprinting method, to the silhouettes of Wayang, the traditional Indonesian shadow theatre, whose essence is distantly recalled as shapes in movement.

The kaleidoscope of Hadassah Emmerich's paintings suggests lustful profusions that engage the outlines of tropical flowers, fruits and plants while insinuating bodily parts and erotic elements. The appeal to the logic of resemblance and approximations in these works allows reflections, diffractions and distortions as welcomed deviations, forms of visual dissent. When put in relation, elements that wouldn't typically be perceived as belonging to the same context snap together, sparking zones of confrontation and pleasure.

Important recent exhibitions by Emmerich includes: Solo booth Art Brussel 2024 in collaboration with Galerie Ron Mandos (NL); ‘Epicurean Eden’, EMST Athens, GR (2024); ‘False Flat’ at Bonnefanten Museum Maastricht, NL (2022 – 2023); ‘Hips Don't Lie’ at BE-PART, Waregem, BE (2022); ‘Abrasive Paradise’, Kunsthal KadE, Amersfoort, NL (2022); ‘BXL UNIVERSEL II : Multipli.city’, CENTRALE for Contemporary Art, Brussels, BE (2021); ‘The Great Ephemeral Skin’, De Garage, Mechelen, BE (2019). Works by Hadassah Emmerich are included in various private en public collections like the ING Collection (NL). Exhibition text written by Laila Melchior, 2024