I am not a ghost

Pieter Geenen

Archival pigment print series, colour, 30 x 30 cm, framed without glass, 2019

Supported by Fédération Wallonie-BruxellesFlemish Community

The photographic series I am not a ghost focusses on the region around the closed Turkey-Armenia border, where different time frames come to intertwine. In a snow-covered landscape traces and remains of a troubled history are recalling a (recent) past of destruction, erasure and persecution against Armenian, Kurdish and Yezidi communities. These series attempt to save it from oblivion and denial, and try to help us remembering. Using a seemingly direct and honest apparatus like the pinhole camera yet results in a collection of images revealing the shortcomings and mistakes of the medium as exposure times with camera obscura are long and techniques are beyond control. Only abstraction seems to remain. However, this deconstructed and fragmented translation of reality actually makes us aware of the fragile construction of history, memory, and of the image itself.

Selected exhibitions:

Colección INELCOM Arte Contemporáneo Madrid; V2Vingt Brussels 2019