Splendid isolation

de Tanja Boon, Ann Hoste, Philippe van Cauteren, Liesje Vandenbroeck

Splendid Isolation is a group exhibition that seeks to explore the particular conditions of life in solitude, and more precisely the creative impulses it can nourish. Bringing together an intergenerational and international group of artists, it centres on the artistic output that is induced by life under self-imposed or forced restrictions and foregrounds herein a number of positions. They include working conditions in which artists have been brutally cut off from their environment, have opted for a voluntary withdrawal or are bound to live in socially restricted conditions within their own community. Solitude can be either welcomed or dreaded as uninvited loneliness.00The introspection and concentration associated with a creative practice has occasionally motivated artists to withdraw from society. Living in silence can be experienced as an advantage or even as a necessary requirement to create. Today, any form of absolute isolation has become hard to imagine. In a globalised world with its deeply networked structures, life is imbued with interaction, visibility and connectedness. Under these circumstances, personal withdrawal and escapist desires often align with the choice for a more sustainable or even autarkic life or are inspired by a fundamental dissatisfaction with an unjust political system.00Exhibition: S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium (14.05.-18.09.2022).