VM Art Gallery is pleased to present Belonging, a two-person exhibition featuring the works of Malika Abbas and Wendy…
VM Art Gallery is pleased to present Belonging, a two-person exhibition featuring the works of Malika Abbas and Wendy Marijnissen.The exhibition will open on Friday, December 15th at 5 pm and continue till December 30th 2023.
Concept Note
To belong
To be
To fit in…
Longing for a familiar place
Longing to be with those we love
Longing to come home to oneself
How we define ‘belonging’ varies broadly and entails a multitude of interpretations.
When we feel like we belong somewhere it creates a sense of home, a feeling of comfort. It offers a place of refuge and security. For most of us, it’s where nurturing and intimacy begin. It shapes our identity and informs who we become. ‘Home’ is not always a physical place: Sometimes it’s a feeling, a memory, a person. Photography can play a pivotal role in helping us understand the world around us.
The images, and the act of image-making, become part of the dialogue within ourselves and with others. By observing and documenting, we are able to receive and process what unfolds before us.
After meeting each other for the first time in a panel discussion on documentary photography, we continued our conversations on the importance of storytelling within our work. It was during this time that we discovered the similarities in our work. Both of us draw inspiration from our past, our childhood and most importantly our families. We connected through the shared experience of having lost our mothers. The challenges of motherhood or having lost the ability to become a mom.
Even though we come from different cultural and social backgrounds which greatly determine how we live through loss, the actual feeling transcends all boundaries. Grief or missing someone is universal.
Through our conversations, we discovered an interconnectedness and decided to engage in a photographic dialogue with our thoughts, feelings, images, video and texts. Exploring what it means to belong, long, become or be.
