Cindy Wright | Eye to eye
As of March 2022, the Museum Hof van Busleyden will be undergoing restoration. The permanent exhibition will therefore not be accessible for some time. More information .
Cindy Wright | Eye to eye
Museum Hof van Busleyden
01.12.2020 - 17.01.2021
Cindy Wright (°1972) creates photo-realistic paintings and drawings in which transience and vulnerability take centre stage. Through her work, she asks questions about our finiteness, the future of our society and the world we live in.
Eye To Eye (2019-2020) is a series of ten monumental charcoal drawings of human skulls. Each skull represents a person who is no longer here. An eleventh, even larger charcoal drawing completes the series. In this work, the ten individual skulls come together. Eye To Eye aims to move beyond the morbid as well as away from the skull as a trendy cultural symbol. The artist thereby joins the tradition of commemorating the dead, which occurs in different cultures and civilizations.
The series engages in a dialogue with several works from Museum Hof van Busleyden's display. The skull motif is also common in sixteenth-century art. For example, Saint Jerome, patron of the humanists, is typically depicted with a skull, as in this Mechelen alabaster.
Together with the artist, three curators reflect on three works of art in the museum: the picture of Saint Jerome, a portrait of the grieving Margaret of Austria and the fragile Enclosed Gardens. They invite the visitor to look differently at the taboo surrounding mortality and the significance of the skull today and in the Renaissance.
A musical composition by Peter Verhelst accompanies Eye To Eye.
