Chrystel Mukeba: Les Instants
At a moment of no particular significance one says: "Don't move" or
"Un instant, s'il te plaît!" And takes a photograph. It's just that the light is touching the environment in a particular gentle way, it's so intensely still.
It's weightless. These moments — 'Les Instants' by Chrystel Mukeba —
are so purely instinctive that any attempt at a rationalisation would
betray the essence of this photography.
About the project
Chrystel Mukeba collects and presents intimate fragments of a daily life that seems to flow out of time. One slips in with hushed steps, between rustles and whispers. In the particular attention paid to the smallest details, one believes to read the desire of the photographer to exchange her eyes for those of childhood. If they sometimes appear closed, evading the gaze, or sometimes even imploring, it is these same eyes that make everything become an event.
At their contact, a snail shell lodged in the palm of the hand, a reflection in the water, or simply the sun spots dancing on the wall become a source of enchantment. The poetry of the detail that is sketched in these small things has the prodigious power to revive, by soliciting our senses, emotions buried in our memory. To seize the fragile and fleeting grace of these precious moments seems to be a quest for eternity of which photography is often the instrument.<...>
It is a sign of the irrepressible desire to fix in time the ephemeral course of the little things in life, to finally suspend time and perhaps even to dream madly of overcoming it.
(Marie Papazoglou, curator)
About the photographer
Chrystel Mukeba BE (1983).
After a photographic course at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels, Chrystel Mukeba becomes the assistant of the Belgian photographer Vincen Beeckman from 2011 to 2013. She shows her first work during International Biennial of the Image in Liege (2012) where she presented a series of images on old age. Exhibiting in various places in Belgium until today, her photographic practice revolves around the intimate and her loved ones.
Death, the anguish of loss and the need to freeze people and moments are recurrent themes addressed by the photographer.
Her latest series of images, Les Instants, is a reflection on childhood. Through portraits and images of daily life, the photographer tries to freeze the ephemera of a moment.
A book with the same title will be published in March 2022 by ARP 2 Editions followed by an exhibition in September 2022 at the Ete 78 gallery in Brussels.
Website
www.chrystelmukeba.com
