Born in 1993, lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Emerging aesthetic typologies, permeating visual culture and discourse, reflect how trends shape Western societies' fascination with an idealized, ritualized rural lifestyle, imbued with nostalgia for the “good old days”. Doris Hardeman's artistic and writing practice questions the mechanics of this glorification process of tradition. Objects, materials, symbols and narrative fragments are arranged in poetic assemblages, landscapes of a 2.0 romanticism. What are we re-enacting on the stage of late capitalism? Left-stage, symbolism reigns supreme, with manufactured authenticity, a fantasized past and alienated workers. Right-stage, emancipatory fictions, a shared desire to escape, reflexive idleness. Far from falling into an easy, rigid dualism, Doris Hardeman's work opens up dramaturgies where the attentive eye can find glimpses of questioning, lethargic characters with elusive minds. Entangled in ordinary tragedies, they inhabit her texts but desert her installations, leaving behind only traces of their passing. Sensitive to the materials, values and uses that shape things and spaces, Doris Hardeman questions the way in which a place, an object or a story becomes a symbol, acquiring an ideological charge that surpasses its utilitarian scope. Fiction then exceeds function, ornament becomes structural, roses, moldings and scrolls quote a tale that might have never been.
Written by Juliette Gaufreteau.
Coming from different geographical and cultural backgrounds, Doris Hardeman (BE/NL) and Natalia Dominguez (ES) have drawn on local resources in Clermont-Ferrand to experiment with new forms in the making. None of the displayed pieces are considered final works, but stages of experimentation that will continue to unfold and evolve through time. Their formal research has been enriched by their observations of local industry and architecture, whereas their materials come from local car scrapyards, recycling centres, second-hand shops and specialised industrial suppliers, among others. This local anchoring does not prevent them from considering more widely shared issues such as power dynamics, extractivism, and strategies for protecting and controlling bodies. The installations they unfold throughout the space of La Diode exude both great aesthetic sensitivity and a playful character, but also a certain violence, softened by the sensuality of the textures and colours used.
Sensitive to the materials, values and uses that inform objects and spaces, Doris Hardeman is interested in how a place or object becomes symbolic, acquiring an ideological significance that transcends its utilitarian purpose. In her research, she asks: What role do ornaments play in the domestic space? What place do they occupy in the industrial landscape?
As a preliminary response to these questions, the sculptures she presents are part of an intuitive journey, an abstract plastic transcription of the way in which architectures relate to bodies and individuals. They explore the idea that a colour or a moulding is not only decorative, but also materialises thresholds, a liminarity. De-functionalised balustrades and conduits reveal themselves as markers of space, reminding us of our own corporeality, the physicality of our movements. Doris Hardeman thus invites us to consider how structures and bodies inhabit and influence each other, how they orientate and delimit themselves, participating in the same arrangement.
Written by Isabelle Henrion & Juliette Gaufreteau.