8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Artists: Anh Trân, Annabelle Agbo Godeau, Brandon Ndife, Chemu Ng’ok, Dalton Paula, Donna Kukama, Francis Offman, Hamishi Farah, Jenny Montigny, Kerry James Marshall, Marcela Cantuária, Misheck Masamvu, Oscar Murillo

Exhibition title: 8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent

Curated by: Gabi Ngcobo and Oscar Murillo

Venue: Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium

Date: June 26 – October 2, 2022

Photography: Rik Vannevel / images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

“The artists featured in this exhibition face history and the present by embracing ‘trouble’ and a kind of ‘paining’ that forces one to decide, in a time marked indecision. Where objects disappear, they are replaced by feelings and energy; where they appear they are being dissected in order to uncover another world of possibilities.” – Gabi Ngcobo

From 26 June to 2 October 2022, the three art museums on the banks of the Leie river – Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Museum van Deinze en de Leiestreek and Roger Raveel Museum – present the 8th edition of the Biennial of Painting.

MDD’s exhibition, entitled The ‘t’ is Silent, is curated by curator Gabi Ngcobo and artist Oscar Murillo.

Painting, historically regarded as the ‘royal road’ of artistic practice, has over the centuries meant that the art form, alongside drawing, served as a foundation for artistic education, where such education was available. The history of western art pedagogy in colonised places across the world often reveals that the colonial government’s rule was indirectly played out in how formal artistic pedagogies were organised. The recent calls for decolonial education around the world – fuelled by the Black Lives Matter and other affiliated movements , as well as the pandemic – have inspired reconsiderations of the human condition and the politics of care. At the same time, these social movements have coincided with a new rise in representational painting that has been critiqued, in the words of artist Olu Oguibe, as “jolly, no-worries, all sunshine and flowers, ebullient wealthy middle-class representation of Blackness…”

The ‘t’ is Silent operates adjacent to this renewed emergence. Departing from the work of Jenny Montigny in MDD’s collection and Oscar Murillo’s Disrupted Frequencies, this exhibition focuses on artists and works that record time differently, works that are about painting or that think through the medium of painting as a form of journaling – of working things through and of learning anew.

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Oscar Murillo, Disrupted Frequencies, 2021, Courtesy of the artist

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Francis Offman, Untitled, 2019-2022, Courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London and P420, Bologna; Collection of Mathias Kes

Francis Offman, Untitled, 2019, Courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London and P420, Bologna; Collection of Mathias Kes

Francis Offman, Untitled, 2019-2022, Courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London and P420, Bologna; Collection of Mathias Kes

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Francis Offman, Untitled, 2019-2022, Courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London and P420, Bologna; Collection of Mathias Kes

Francis Offman, Untitled, 2021-2022, Courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London and P420, Bologna; Collection of Mathias Kes

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Annabelle Agbo Godeau, Color Chart, 2022, Courtesy of the artist

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Annabelle Agbo-Godeau, Catfish, 2022, Courtesy of the artist

Annabelle Agbo Godeau, Red Herring, 2022, Courtesy of the artist

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Annabelle Agbo Godeau, Irma Vep, 2022, Courtesy of the artist

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Marcela Cantuária, La larga noche de los 500 años, 2019, Collection of Hendrik Vermeire and Arne Notebaert

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Dalton Paula, Retrato Silenciado, 2014, Collection of Camilla and Eduardo Barella

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Hamishi Farah, Ostentatio Vulnerum, 2021, Collection of Scott Lorinsky

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Jenny Montigny, De School, 1910, Collection Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Anh Trần, The world thunderstruck, 2021, Courtesy of the artist

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Brandon Ndife, Untitled (Toy), 2016, Collection de Gaby et Wilhelm Schurmann

Brandon Ndife, Door to Cupboard, 2020, Collection de Gaby et Wilhelm Schurmann

Brandon Ndife, Hygge, 2020, Collection de Gaby et Wilhelm Schurmann

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Brandon Ndife, Door to Cupboard, 2020, Collection de Gaby et Wilhelm Schurmann

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Anh Trần, Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head, 2022, Courtesy of the artist

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Misheck Masamvu, Swing, 2011, Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Kerry James Marshall, Study for The Academy, 2012, Courtesy of La Cachepli

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Chemu Ng’ok, Obscure, 2022, Courtesy of the artist and CENTRAL FINE, Miami

Chemu Ng’ok, Rapture, 2022,, Courtesy of the artist and CENTRAL FINE, Miami

8th Biennial of Painting: The ‘t’ is Silent, 2022, exhibition view, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Study for Porch Deck), 2014, Courtesy of La Cachepli

Misheck Masamvu, Frozen Screen, 2022; Misheck Masamvu, Idle Slide, 2022, Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London