Until 22 February, Brussels will become a living gallery as Belgium's leading photography festival takes over the city for the 10th year.
The festival, created in 2016 by Delphine Dumont from Hangar, spans dozens of venues and showcases over 100 artists. Belgian talent is placed front and centre, with the work of 52 Belgian artists on display at this year's event.
Throughout its duration, exhibitions will be held in contemporary art galleries, home galleries, museums, and art centres.
Since the event is not limited to one single venue, it allows attendees to discover new aspects of Brussels while immersing themselves in both local and international photography.
The Festival serves as a way to establish Brussels as an essential player in the European photography scene and is part of the European Month of Photography, a group of photography festivals held in major European cities, including Paris, Berlin, Luxembourg, Vienna, and Lisbon.
Along with the exhibitions, there will be artist talks, book signings, live music, and group tours as the event caters to both amateur and professional photography enthusiasts alike.
One of the chronological photo galleries from “Another Love Story.” Credit: Vicente Torre Hovelson/ The Brussels Times.
An account of 'Another Love Story'
One of the stand-out exhibits is by Dominican-French artist Karla Hiraldo Voleau. Titled 'Another Love Story', the project was originally intended as a tribute to romantic love, but ended up taking a dark turn.
The project ended up turning into a tale of lies, deception, and betrayal when Hiraldo Voleau found out that her partner at the time, who in the project is referred to as “X,” was leading a double life, living with another woman with whom he was trying to have a child.
In an attempt to take her story back, Hiraldo Voleau recreated intimate moments she had experienced with “X” using a paid actor. She does this chronologically, organised by each month she and “X” spent together.
“When the worst was revealed – X’s double life – I laid out the hundreds of vernacular images from our year-long relationship in front of me, on the floor and on the walls, indeed like a detective searching for clues," Hiraldo Voleau told The Brussels Times.
"But only at first did I try to find a truth in them, as I quickly understood that a photograph cannot serve as proof of anything. That’s when I went a step further and decided to reenact every image identically with a doppelgänger of X."
One of the cell phones hung in the exhibition that plays a recreation sequence of messages exchanged between Hiraldo Voleau and the other woman involved with “X.” Credit: Vicente Torre Hovelson/ The Brussels Times.
"We all play roles, even in our most intimate relationships,” she explained.
“I wanted the viewer to constantly question what is real and what is false in the images, because this mirrors the feeling I had throughout the entire breakup: when was he playing a role? When was he lying?
"When was I myself playing the role of the perfect girlfriend, and to what extent am I acting in the reenactments? Everything is placed on a boundary that fascinates me, the line between performance and 'real life', which in turn raises the question of what can actually be considered 'real life'."
'Another Love Story' will be on display at La Nombreuse until 22 February. Hiraldo Voleau’s next solo exhibition is a continuation of 'Another Love Story', which focuses on self-love and body dysmorphia. 'You Can Have It All' opens on 9 May at the Lenzburg photo festival in Switzerland.
Other highlights of this year's Photo Brussels Festival include L’Ukraine en résistance by Oleksandr Glyadyelov at Géopolis, and Arena by Tom Lyon at Médor.
For more information on Photo Brussels, visit the festival's website.
