Caroline Mesquita at MOT International

Artist: Caroline Mesquita

Exhibition title: Some blue in my mouth

Venue: MOT International, Brussels, Belgium

Date: March 18 – April 30, 2016

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and MOT International, Brussels

MOT International is delighted to present the first solo exhibition of Caroline Mesquita in Belgium. Featuring new brass sculptures alongside the artist’s first ever film, Some blue in my mouth depicts a scene in which twelve inanimate characters are watching themselves being filmed.

Mesquita’s installations are inhabited by anthropomorphic life-size figures taking part in scenarios that stage collective moments of intimacy. Without ever being overly explicit, the themes of human attraction, appearances and deviance are always present within her work. Emphasis is given to the materials and the way they are physically manipulated by the artist: assembled from large metal sheets that she folds, cuts and welds, the sculptures and their polished, shiny surfaces are subsequently patinated, oxidised and painted over.

Such processes of transformation are made visible in Mesquita’s film, which shows the brass sculptures ‘naked’, their body being progressively covered with drawings suggesting limbs, faces and clothes. As their appearance evolves, their identity and gender change too. The artist herself is alternately perceived carrying and dressing them, adopting more and more affectionate attitudes towards them in a manner that brings to mind the myth of the sculptor Pygmalion who fell in love with his own creation, Galatea. Observing the scene from the outside, the viewer becomes the audience of an audience within a metatheatre that reveals the physical attraction, sometimes felt as awkward, that objects can elicit from humans.

Caroline Mesquita (b. 1989 Brest, France) lives and works in Paris and Brittany. Recent solo exhibitions include Bal at SpazioA, Pistoia; Windsurfers at Carlier Gebauer, Berlin; Sloths at Centre d’art du Parc Saint Léger, France; Camping at Union Pacific, London (2015). Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at On Stellar Rays, New York; FRAC Ile-de-France, Paris; The Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Flax Foundation | Fahrenheit, Los Angeles (2014); Fondation Ricard, Paris (2013); Monnaie de Paris, Paris; Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012).