Barbara IweinsKatalog
We are pleased to invite you to a meeting about Barbara Iweins’ book, Katalog, in the presence of the artist, on Friday 24 June, from 6 to 9 pm.
This meeting takes place in the context of the publication of the book and the exhibition of Barbara Iweins’ work at the Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, from 4 July to 25 September 2022.
“Absolutely everything went into it: from my daughter’s holey sock to my son’s Lego to my vibrator, my anti-anxiety medication, everything, absolutely everything.”
Barbara Iweins.
Barbara Iweins has moved 11 times in her life, and each time she was terrified by the amount of stuff she had to pack. For two years, 15 hours a week, she staged and photographed the 12,795 objects in her house, without any filter or prior selection. Then, through a rigorous classification, she listed them according to their material, their colour, their degree of use… and isolated 50 essential ones that she tells us in short, chiselled stories, as funny as they are moving. A sensitive and intimate self-portrait of a modern woman and a self-exposure pushed to its limits.
Biography
Barbara Iweins is a Belgian photographer who has started her artistic career in Amsterdam where she has lived for a number of years. A collector since a tender age, Barbara continues to classify, and gather and archive her photographic subjects according to strict criteria.
Fascinated by the vulnerability of humans, she passes her time to push the boundaries of what is intimate. Her series “Au coin de ma rue” where she entered bit by bit in the private life of strangers. Or her project 7AM/7PM where she invited these same strangers to sleep at her house to capture the innocence and fragility just as they wake up. Her series “Bath” where she captured the moments of quiet solitude characterize her quest for innocence and the beauty in imperfection. Since her return to Brussels, she has retreated into her own world where she lives like a hermit working on her new project KATALOG. It’s the first time she uses her private life as a case study.