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".

Sergey Bratkov / Сергій Братков

(c)image: A4A vzw.
Photography , 12 x (50 x 60 cm)

Bedtime Stories is a series of twelve staged colour photographs in which each scene depicts a child’s nightmare; the hand-written children’s rhymes underneath the photographs ironically capture the content of the image. Bratkov drew inspiration from darkly humorous folkloric poetry from Russia, which portrays children as adults and adults as children. At the same time, these pictures contain a clear reference to the everyday reality of mafia violence, which plagued Russia in the early 1990s.