Photography mediums have been used to express the momentary, fragile moments that would be lost eventually. Artists are able to give them a material, everlasting life by recording them. The action may seem momentary, but it is the final decision of the artist what gives it value. To highlight the unusual within the overseen. To find the beauty on the simple, the surreal.

Malick Sidibé´s succesfull attempt to perpetuate the post colonial Mali attitude takes a surreal shift. The people he portrays show a massive cultural swap that, in my point of view , is magical. Young girls obsessed with David Bowie, young men adopting Ye-Ye music and taste. It´s both beautiful and concerning how westernized Africa became. On one side these people are shown with an innocent attitude toward the new foreign fashion. However this cultural adoption may also leave the previous culture behind. The population interprets culture, changes it. Sidibé´s actions perpetuates them for us to see them nowadays, in a different context, as what seems to be a wonderland of freedom.

In the case of Almeida, the surreal is found within hands, which are given a characterization, even a personality. I imagine them as independent bodies. Within the feminist context of the exhibition, we may affirm that those hands seem to belong to women, but, what do their gestures tell us? Being barely shown at a disturbing light, these feminine hands seem to be releasing from a cage, but with a sense of tiredness. The work raises many questions that can´t be directly answered.

 Doujourie deals with a similar uncertainty than Almeida. Her pictures depic a man that, based on the angle of the camera and the movie movement, could be perceived as a womenlike body. The question of gender difference is adressed, as it noo longer seems to matter. This body is beautiful itself, for any or both genders.

This artist´s paintings make me think of a relation with Magical realism in Latin american literature, where logically impossible events happen in the realms of the everyday with such a subtleness that a naive expectator may not even notice. Surrealism without forcing the material reality offers. 

Borreman´s poetic alteration of the space creates a sense of tension, as he raises question that aren´t being answered. What are the characters doing on "The four fairies"? , What are the "Pupils" actually working on? The uneasiness of the shadows and the relation persona/place/objects comes from the instinctive need of making a rational story of the painting and the artist not allowing us to do so.

On this project I am interested on working with uncertainty, and how to create a sense of uneasiness on the public. I would also experiment with the idea of giving casual objects an eerie meaning.