Exhibitions cycle: WHAT IF WOMEN RULED THE WORLD? Part 4
Bertille Bak’s solo exhibition is being organised in the context of SPOTLIGHT, a new programme launched by EMΣT|The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, which aims to present a more focused survey of the work of one artist in its collection and, in doing so, allowing audiences to gain a better understanding of that artist’s practice. SPOTLIGHT will feature works from the museum’s own collection, as well as loans of artists’ works from other institutions and the artists themselves.
Bertille Bak’s art, largely the result of her particular background and upbringing in a family of coal miners in the French North, is a fertile fusion of personal history and creative exploration. In her work, aspects of the everyday become elements of fantastical myth-making. Her creative practice brings together film and installation, participatory strategies and collectivity mechanisms employed by different communities, in a playful and often absurd manner. Bak approaches the communities she each time focuses on, in an experiential manner within a framework of social geography. Her imaginary nourishes – not without a sense of tongue-in-cheek affection – from their habits and traditions. In asserting her unwavering commitment to empowering the voices of marginalised and disenfranchised groups, Bak reminds us of art’s transformative, healing powers and of its ability to unite us all into one single global community. Her work as a whole bears testimony to a sense of humility and honesty, which she never fails to bring into her relationship with the communities she chooses to work with as she attempts to foreground the possibility to thwart the established order.
Mineur Mineur (2022) is a poignant exploration of childhood across the bleak landscapes of the mining industry around the world. Comprising five synchronised video projections, this riveting installation raises awareness on the experiences of children working in different mines in the global South: a silver mine in Bolivia, a coal mine in India, a gold mine in Thailand, a tin mine in Indonesia and a sapphire mine in Madagascar.
In each of the videos, the children trek through the labyrinthine tunnels and passages of the mines, transforming the grim setting of child labour into an idiosyncratic universe of play. The contrast between their innocent joy and their condition of economic exploitation, serves as commentary on human resilience in the face of hardship. Set to a soundtrack made up of different recordings, accordion music and off-key sounds, Mineur Mineur challenges viewers to reflect on the complexities of childhood and the hard truths lurking beneath the surface of continuing child labour in contemporary globalised economies, at the same time that it is a call to action for a fairer, more equitable world.
The exhibition also features Untitled (2009), an installation in the museum’s collection composed of doors from torn down houses in Barlin, in norther France, once the site of several coal mines, as well as Block 02, 03, 04, 07, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29(2007-2023), a selection of drawings depicting the facades of all the coal miners’ homes in Nord-Pas-de-Calais before either being renovated or demolished, at a time when the local government was attempting to reverse the town’s post-industrial decline by embarking on a plan of gentrification that displaced the town’s residents from their homes.
Bertille Bak’s work is also featured in the exhibition of works from the museum’s collection on the 3rd floor, entitled Women, Together.
BIOGRAPHY
Bertille Bak was born in Arras, France in 1983. Solo exhibitions (selection): Jeu de Paume, Paris (2024); Marcel Duchamp Prize, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2023); Le Louvre-Lens, Lens, Mineur Mineur, Mario Merz Foundation, Turin (2022); Bertille Bak-Poussières, Artconnexion, Lille (2019); Usine à divertissement, FRAC PACA, Marseille, FRAC Normandie, Caen (2017); and Circuits, Modern Art Museum of Paris (2012). Group exhibitions (selection): The Human – The Conditions of Creativity in the Age of AI, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (2023); Barbe à Papa, CAPC Bordeaux, Kochi Biennial, Folklore, Centre Pompidou Metz (2022); Mario Merz Prize finalists, 3rd edition, Foundation Merz, Turin (2019); Antidoron-EMΣT Collection, Documenta 14, Fridericianum, Kassel, Hacking Habitat, Niet Normaal Foundation, Utrecht (2017); 5th Thessaloniki Biennial & Double Feature, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2015). Her work is also part of the following collections: Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Paris, FRAC Rhône-Alpes, FRAC Aquitaine, FRAC Alsace, FRAC Basse Normandie, FRAC Limousin, François Pinault Collection, Artis, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la création, among others.
PRESS MATERIAL
ΕΜΣΤ SPONSORS
