Salon
Solo Exhibition
Cunst-link, Gallery Bortier, Brussels
04 -19 December, 2021
Julia E. Dyck creates a space for transformations. Through sound, sculpture, video and performance, the exhibition space becomes a fantastical center for aesthetic transformation and care - a dwelling that takes the body outside of itself and subjects it to unfamiliar impressions and orientations.
Self-care is defined as taking active care over one’s emotional and mental physical well-being. However, in our contemporary moment living under capitalism, we often find ourselves mistaking care of our basic needs and acts of self-sustenance as self-care. How can we reexamine our understanding of self-care? How can we move towards a notion of care that is rooted in oneself and that extends beyond ourselves to embrace community? Salon puts forward a notion of care that is collective, sustained, and relational.
The physical salon is a space for embracing rituals of taking care of one’s body and psyche. There is a specific intimacy and unique pleasure that is shared with the person that touches, massages, caresses our scalp as they work. For some, we view our hairdressers as people we can share our secrets and emotions with, as they go through the process of physically transforming us, removing physical material from our corporeal selves. This is something that Julia E Dyck explores in her work, as someone who is a trained hairdresser and has worked as one, consistently alongside her artistic practice for the past seventeen years. These works are a culmination of the intertwining of these two practices. The hair used in the works is real human hair, collected over years of building relationships with those whose hair Dyck has cut.
Through embracing a queer pheonomenological approach, Dyck delineates an experience of the body that is oriented towards perception. Perception of the self and perception of the other. Hair, as a substance, reinforces this. It is part of ourselves, until it is literally cut and dissociated. For some, this elicits a response of disgust, to touch or hold something that is no longer part of us. For others, we may find beauty in its reflectivity and sheen. Cut from the body, its meaning is altered.
To this, she invites you:
Come in, come in to the space of the salon. Orient yourself towards back towards your own body, embrace its flesh, hair and skin. Revel in its beauty, for if you let it, it can caress you. The body cares.
Exhibition text by Ella Den Elzen (also in French)
Exhibition furniture by Investigations Geometriques
