See you in my room
An exhibition by Emily Kelly and Gonzalo Morales Leiva
Text by Gonzalo Morales Leiva
SEE YOU IN MY ROOM is an exhibition by Emily Kelly (Belgium, 1997) and Gonzalo Morales Leiva (Chile, 1985) that explores artistic creation as an urgency, born from a world in tremor, where individuals and ideas are constantly in motion, navigating forces beyond their control. In this context, the artistic process becomes both a reaction and a refuge, a response to the uncertainties and tensions of contemporary existence, a zone of encounter where they improvise the mechanisms with which they build fragile and passing common worlds1.
As it could have been understood at some point in history, “see you in my room” was an invitation to a private and safe interior space where desires could be fulfilled, opinions expressed or simply inhabited surrounded by a collection of objects that reveal the identity of a person in their time. For Kelly and Morales Leiva, “see you in my room”, is an ambiguous statement in a world where certainties are blurred, a room is a provisional space for temporary encounters and an artistic work is a question that emerges from an affective and political behaviour that considers the poetic as the last possible shelter.
Kelly explores the intersection of materialities, spaces and narratives in the realm of sculpture and site-specific installations, the emergence of a personal and political language. Her practice is a creative intuitive pulse where the intertwining of natural and industrial elements enables the formation of hybrid constructions. Her body is a fundamental element, both in the creation through repetitive manual work, which evidences deviations and imperfections, contrasting the nature of the materials used, and in the modular creation of works that she can carry, assemble and disassemble. In this logic, the body is a creative criterion that accounts for diversity in contact and its contradictions are necessary for the generation of new resistances and adaptations, as well as a state of constant alertness to a need for mobility.
Morales Leiva grounds his practice in processes of physical improvisation, exploring subjective states where responsiveness is materialized in sculptural objects, drawings, videos and photographs. The actions are assembled using mainly his body as a conductor of new language signs, together with other materials and objects that result in different types of sound, tactile stimulation, informing through memory and haptic perception, rather than conceptual invention. In his performances we perceive the need to work beyond the space delimited a priori by the performance itself, and the interest in continuing to create once the action has ended is evident, which has led him to work artistically with the phantasmatic residues of the disappeared action. In this sense, the recordings, texts, photographs or other types of objects generated during his actions, which the spectator encounters outside the time of the performance, contain a high level of ambivalent performativity: their status transcends the documentary2.
Through drawings, sculptures, video performances, and photography, the exhibition unfolds as a series of encounters with uncertain, unstable worlds. The works create imprecise configurations, transforming surfaces into permeable devices capable of archiving actions, ready for precarious migrations. SEE YOU IN MY ROOM operates from a space that embraces ambiguity, eroticism, and poetic behavior—an agreement between two artists that keeps artistic creation open to displacement and indeterminacy.
1. “Algunas maneras de hablar de si mismo”. Estéticas de laboratorio. Laddaga, Reinaldo. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo Editora, 2010.
2. “Mancharikuy sobre la obra performática de Gonzalo Morales Leiva”. Victor López Zumelzu, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2023.
10.10.2024 – 20.10.2024
Wed – Sun 2 – 7 PM
Opening Thursday 10.10.2024 | 6 – 9 PM
Artist-Led Tour 19.10.2024 | 4 PM
Join the artists for a talk and tour of the exhibition, where you can hear the stories behind the work and ask your own questions.
