Save the date: Fugue - Aaron Amar Bhamra & Céline Mathieu

Image caption: Aaron Amar Bhamra, Ref., (Kite), 2025

Fugue is a duo exhibition presenting the artistic practices of Aaron Amar Bhamra (°1992, AT) and Céline Mathieu (°1989, BE). Fugue features newly commissioned artworks, emerging from a generous dialogue between both artists. Céline Mathieu’s body of work was developed during her residency at Jester. This exhibition marks the first presentation by Aaron Amar Bhamra in Belgium.

Fugue resonates with a harmony found in a variety of voices and fleeting gestures - orchestrated in counterpoint, inversion, and echo. The title is drawn from the Latin 'fuga' (flight) and refers to both meanings of the word: the polyphonic compositional motive of interwoven themes and the psychological state of dissociation. Whereas Aaron Amar Bhamra makes references to his background in architecture and music, exploring doublings/mirrorings/halvings within artworks in the constellation; Céline Mathieu is looking at ways of re-wiring budgets, and re-valuing personal relations. Others are drawn in, literally and figuratively, to make evocative new works that ponder the architecture of the exhibition space and the geolocation of Genk. Sounds and scents doze their sculptures asleep while an unfinished symphony of breaths swells into a breeze that ascends them on air. The ephemeral gestures and elusive interventions take flight to the workshops, the residency and the accommodation building of the organisation, while relations, thoughts, means, and affects circulate and temporarily halt in fugue.

On air:

At the close of the 19th century, the Kneipp sanatorium landed in Bokrijk, a village next to Genk, drawn by the abundance of healthy air. Here, lung patients would reside to cure from tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments through hydro-, balneo- and aërotherapy. Simultaneously, the region of Genk became a renowned station d’artistes - a beloved haven for painters, scientists and writers - that flourished with the same fresh air that nourished its natural landscape. The latter fled when the mining industry of coal extraction irreversibly scarred the landscape. Oxygen was sparse in this vast network of tunnels, while its fabricators often suffered from dust lungs and other pulmonary diseases. Air thus carries the sound of many voices and the weight of many histories - on the one hand healing through purity and presence, on the other harmful through pollution and absence. Air quality and health remain therefore inseparable and indispensable to all life, then and now.

Fugue is produced in collaboration with Phileas - The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art an supported by the Flemish Government, the City of Genk, and the Austrian Cultural Forum Brussels and will be complemented by a collaborative publication, edition and public programme.

Image caption: Aaron Amar Bhamra, Ref., (Kite), 2025