Middle Gate

    NLEN

    The exhibition project Middle Gate II – The Story of Dymphna is a collaboration between M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp) and the cultural centre de Werft in Geel. Middle Gate II is the follow up to the exhibition Middle Gate, curated by Jan Hoet in Geel in 2013. The exhibition concept is closely tied to the legend of the holy Dymphna, saint of the possessed, the mentally ill and patroness against epilepsy and insanity. The legend of Dymphna shares a strong connection to the identity of Geel, "the charitable city".

    Almagul Menlibayeva

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    (c)image: Almagul Menlibayeva
    Portrait of my Daughter II, 2010-2010
    Almagul Menlibayeva
    Photography , 80.2 x 53.5 x 2.3 cm
    lambda print, alu di-bond

    Part of Menlibayeva's Small Brave Girls series, which shows children living in the periphery of post-soviet Kazakhstan, in a remote village that has not escaped the changes of the soviet and postsoviet eras. The children are surrounded by corpses - corpses of the animals they live with, live from, and consume. They grow up alongside death, and learn to accept it as part of life. Their faces betray a wisdom unknown to city dwellers, who live in separation from nature and from the presence of death. Here, Menlibayeva offers insight in the developments of modern Kazakhstan, the every day life of its people, and the upbringing of its next generation.

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