Untitled 

Editor: So, this is an untitled mixed-media collage by Katrien De Blauwer. It feels quite melancholic, doesn't it? A fragmented portrait combined with a desolate landscape... almost like a memory fading. What do you make of it? Curator: Fading is exactly the word. It's funny, the brain. How it splices images together, creates its own logic. It's as if this artist dove into her subconscious and handed us a page from her diary – one that isn’t even entirely legible, thankfully! What about that solitary tree... does that say anything to you? Editor: Maybe it’s a symbol of resilience, standing alone in that barren landscape? Or perhaps it signifies loneliness. Curator: Precisely! De Blauwer doesn’t give us definitive answers. She is asking *us* to complete the picture, quite literally! Isn’t that landscape unnervingly flat, like it just ends? It is pasted-in rather forcefully... and somewhat out of focus? This reminds me of something Roland Barthes wrote on photography… do you know it? Editor: Not off the top of my head! Curator: He talks about photography as a ‘certificate of presence,’ which in this case I think points toward an absent person… whose face is missing a crucial part, by the way. He/She/They are fading, returning back to earth in soil and memories… a potent image. Editor: I never thought of it that way, as evidence of someone’s absence! It really changes the way I perceive the collage now. The fragmentation, the melancholy... it all makes sense in this context. Curator: Right? Isn’t art grand? There one moment and gone the next! I guess what i learned is to try even harder not to take anything at face value, if it’s even possible. And what about you? Editor: I'll definitely be thinking about this idea of photography and memory... thanks to you! It's something I can use in my own art too.