“We’ve Seen Things”
The Brussels duo memymom uses attractive and colourful postmodern imagery to take a critical look at today’s world. With their carefully stripped down exhibition at the Museum of Le Botanique in Brussels they brazenly formulate urgent questions about the world of tomorrow.
With Home Game, Botanique presented the first major retrospective of memymom in Brussels, the home city of mother and daughter duo, artists Marilène Coolens and Lisa De Boeck. The exhibition showcases more than 220 of memymom’s works from 1990 to date, making it a broader and entirely revisited continuation of their solo exhibition at the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi (2018). It centres around the fascinating and important symbiosis between the two artists, both when conceiving and creating their works. Self-taught, they do almost everything themselves: photography, looking for sets and locations, casting, styling, lighting and post-editing – 4 hands working on one project.
New and never seen before
We’ve Seen Things, a work from 2018, is the highlight of the exhibition with which the duo invites visitors to share their take on recent developments in society and in the world that have left a major impression and to which many can relate. Like in Charleroi in 2018, Somewhere Under the Rainbow, The Digital Decade and The Umbilical Vein – the three ‘chapters’ shaping memymom’s artistic journey to date – are the thread running through the exhibition which presents many new photos which have never been seen before. Slowly but surely the very productive Brussels duo unveils what they have produced over the past thirty years.
Botanique’s Museum room lends itself well to the scenography of this exhibition. The visitor starts downstairs with the most recent chapter, Somewhere Under the Rainbow (2016-2021) and continues upstairs in the galleries with a firm look back at The Digital Decade (2010-2015), ending at the back in the sacral area with The Umbilical Vein (1990-2003). It becomes clear that Lisa De Boeck wasn’t always the protagonist; collaborations with different actors, dancers and performers from memymom’s wider circle are placed in the spotlight separately on the walls on the right hand side of the room. This retrospective chronology reveals the contrasts in the duo’s artistic evolution with the help of recurring references and reflections in the room and in the stories. The characters that Lisa took on as a child came to life in a fantasy world whereas the characters she now portrays in real settings display a less carefree reality. This commitment has become increasingly important in memymom’s artistic signature.
Somewhere Under the Rainbow
Somewhere Under the Rainbow is a powerful statement which takes up the entire ground floor of the large room and allows the duo to confront visitors with a mirror. The images from this chapter, which began in 2016, build on their previous work. At first it looks accessible, colourful and pleasing to the eye until the sting and plot twists capture the attention of the viewer: there’s more than meets the eye.
While their universe at the time was characterised mainly by intimacy, introspection and partially autobiographical references, with these 1960s photographs of which many are exhibited for the first time, the duo fearlessly meets the whole head on. Political trends which threaten to compound growing injustice and repression made a strong impression on the duo and prompt memymom to offer a strong response to what they have observed. They help shape opposition and in doing so turn their art into a part of the resistance. The viewer is encouraged to be alert and become aware, guided by the many references to classics from both lowbrow and highbrow culture.
Driven by a hunger for compassion, the new work makes a personal appeal to the visitor with a barely concealed cry for involvement and resistance. To this end the duo creates present day archetypes without ever straying into caricature, while dancing to a soundtrack of dark times. Like everything in the real world is intertwined, the different characters and situations in the various photographs form ‘off screen’ connections and together tell a very powerful story. They do this in an impressive and unconventional iconography which enhances memymom’s own unique imagery.
To this end, Memymom recorded dystopian scenes in Brussels - images which are amplified in the exhibition and to which recordings made in Spain, The United States and in their home studio during lockdown are added.
The Digital Decade
Opposite the previously exhibited photographs from this chapter, including images from The Baby Blues series that open and close the walk along the upper left side wall, eight clusters of photographs from as many series spanning the period 2010-2015 are presented; these are the fruit of collaboration between memymom and other artists, starting with the series The Nurse, which was exhibited in 2011 and marks the first public appearance by the duo. The other series are ‘En Attendant’ (2011), Nunsense (2012), The Patient (2012), The Lady of the House (2012), The Parody (2012), La Petite Princesse (2012) and Windows on the World (2014).
The Umbilical Vein
Towards the end of the exhibition the focus lies on the photographs which got it all started, when Marilène Coolens spent 13 years taking pictures of her daughter who enjoyed re-enacting theatre and movie scenes as a child. Her mother always encouraged her and this is how they slowly amassed an interesting and extensive analogue picture archive that ultimately became public: with an exhibition in De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam in 2013. Revisiting and finding new appreciation for previous work is a mainstay in memymom’s work. Photographs where not only Lisa but also brother Michaël and others play a role are exhibited for the first time.
These images are more than a mother merely taking pictures of her daughter. They document an intense and creative childhood. The photographs are a goldmine for the duo who still have all the originals and negatives. With time the good quality and somewhat raw snapshots of The Umbilical Vein are even becoming vintage, they conjure up memories of the nineties and a sense of nostalgia which is in turn heavily influenced by what is happening in the world today. Seeing these photographs against the backdrop of recent work makes it easier to understand how memymom over the years never conformed to what was expected but stubbornly followed their own path.
Mysterious and complex
Each of memymom’s chapters is characterised by its own narrative and tone. More than contrast they offer an opportunity to look for links, references and reflections on the different walls, made all the more intriguing by the mystery that lies within each photograph and which isn’t always as readily revealed. Some references are very personal and can’t really be deciphered which makes their work complex and multi-layered although their desire for beauty continues to be a leitmotiv. This exhibition and catalogue illustrate how memymom – straight talking and uncompromising yet open to outside influence – continued to pursue the same compelling artistic narrative. Somewhere Under the Rainbow, with its undeniable darkness, shows how easily and energetically the duo managed to translate the intimate and personal quality of their early years into the universal and topical issues of today.
Catalogue ‘Home Game’
On the occasion of the exhibition at Botanique a catalogue was published, with texts by François Cheval, Geert Stadeus & Alice Zucca
memymom is the mother-daughter artistic collaboration of Marilène Coolens and Lisa De Boeck. Their transgenerational project, which first emerged in the 1990s, consists of intimate archives and family photos where Marilène urges her daughter Lisa to express and invent herself by improvising her own theatrical scenes. Since 2004, the protagonists have worked together behind and in front of the lens, simultaneously photographer and model. Over the years, memymom’s dreamlike, partly directed portraits have matured into a conversation about metamorphosis, personal identity, potential, as well as a plea for sensual analysis and tragic romanticism, as irrefutably illustrated in their latest series Somewhere Under the Rainbow.
In this book, which is the culmination and prolongation of their recent work, the two artists disclose the way in which their themes and visual language have remained constant over the past thirty years, while simultaneously evolving fascinatingly in terms of aesthetics and content, through recurring references and reflections. This exhibition also provides an opportunity to see how the inclusion of an assorted group of other people, each playing a different role, has always been part of their artistic process.
CREDITS
Production Exhibition & Catalogue: Le Botanique
Co-production Exhibition: Le Musée de la Photographie à Charleroi, CCHA, VSAC & Vlaams Cultuurhuis ‘de Brakke Grond’
Concept & Curator: memymom
Avec le soutien de Milo-Profi & Cadrus
Special Thanks to Geert Stadeus