Arié, Rue des Grands Carmes
We are in the heart of Brussels, in an old building on Rue des Grands Carmes. Arié Mandelbaum, a Belgian painter born in 1939 of Polish Jewish parents, must leave his studio and his place of residence. The building will soon be destroyed by the city and the move is in progress.
This huge place - a former sponge factory - is located about twenty meters from the Manneken Pis, a major tourist attraction in Brussels. As soon as we enter the doors, we are instantly cut off from everything: the bustling and noisy city center, Brussels, but also time. I was greatly struck by this singular space-time. Apart from two old computers and a smartphone, nothing in this studio would betray the present time. We could even be trapped by the cover of an old "Paris-Match", dated March 7, 1953, announcing the death of Stalin, placed on an old wooden board used as a table, as if this issue had just been published.
I wanted to do a photographic work on Arié and his artistic practice in his studio. As I visited him, I realized that Arié was not painting. Arié no longer paints. His studio is his place of life. He wanders from room to room, listens to cultural shows on the radio, reads a book or the outline of a friend's next work, has coffee, smokes and often receives friends. Two elements of his daily life and his place struck me:
- WAITING: Arié is waiting, but for what? His move to Fontenoille, time passing, waiting for the end of life, waiting for a new life.
- GRIEF: Grief for a past (The Holocaust and the anti-Semitism that marked him, the death of his sons Stéphane and Alexandre), grief for a place that is leaving, grief for a place that will be destroyed, his soul with it.
Based on these two elements, I decided to immortalize Arié through this photographic series. "Arié, Rue des Grands Carmes" aims to immortalize Arié, his studio and place of life that will be destroyed, around the two notions mentioned above: waiting and grief.
"Arié, Rue des Grands Carmes" was made between July and September 2021.
