KETELEER GALLERY is very pleased to present Stambomen (Family Trees), a solo exhibition by Clara Spilliaert (b. 1993, Tokyo, JP; lives and works in Ghent, BE). Clara Spilliaert’s first solo exhibition at the gallery consists of a recent installation that includes several sculptures.
Clara Spilliaert grew up in Tokyo and moved to Belgium in 2009. This significant change, along with the various cultural influences she absorbed, affects and shapes Spilliaert’s thematic, visual, and material choices. Seeking her Belgian roots on her father’s side, Spilliaert decided at the age of 16 to take the leap and live with her grandparents in Bruges. She obtained her degree in drawing (2015) and later in ceramics (2021) at the Luca School of Arts in Ghent.
For her first exhibition at the gallery, Spilliaert primarily focuses on the meaningful subject of family trees, a versatile symbolic theme that forms the core of her literal and figurative motivations, and thus the seed of her recent work. Her search for her own origins soon gained a new dimension when her sister Lisa began investigating their relation to Léon Spilliaert. In addition to discovering that they indeed had a common ancestor with the artist in 1700, she noticed how family trees typically only consider the male name, rendering the female side completely irrelevant. This absurd notion prompted her to illuminate the often-overlooked female side of kinship alongside her exploration of her Belgian roots. Through her Stambomen sculpture series, she not only questions male dominance in genealogy and society (as in Vogelfamilie (Bird Family), 2021), but also reclaims the family tree by reinterpreting it in various ways, reuniting its artificiality with human nature.
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Spilliaert’s close bond with both the animal and plant worlds, which she has cultivated since childhood by raising butterflies on her own, is one she cherishes more than anything and strives to capture and express through her art. By uniting nature and humanity in her sculptures and drawings, Spilliaert reminds us of the parallel between the animal and plant world on one hand, and the often alienated human world on the other. Additionally, her work consistently contains critical reflection. She frequently challenges social and sexual norms and questions established cultural ideas, doing so through a poignant and insightful interplay of historical and mythological references, symbolism, metaphors, and personal memories.
–Lauren Wiggers, 2024
Clara Spilliaert: Stambomen
Jun 22 – Aug 31, 2024
Keteleer Gallery
Antwerp, Belgium
