Massao Mascaro – Ici, là

Massao Mascaro (1990, FR) is an artist based between Geneva and Brussels. His work engages with poetry, politics and territory. His projects are rooted as much in travel and long walks as in the careful observation of everyday life. His work explores the way in which intimacy is interwoven with movement, memory and space.

The exhibition Ici, là brings together two series of photographs, taken in Geneva and Brussels over several years, expressing two distinct relationships with time. Since becoming a parent, Massao Mascaro’s careful observation of everyday life, its repetitive nature and its inscription in time have taken centre stage in his artistic practice.

The first series travels along the banks of the Rhône in Geneva. The grey mirror of the water distorts the contours and light, creating a strange lakeside garden. Devoid of any human presence, these images lie somewhere between contemplation and allegory: the flow of water becomes a metaphor for the passage of time. The second series shifts the gaze to the domestic interior, that of the family apartment in Brussels, where the kitchen table appears after meals. A recurring motif in art history, the table here becomes an accumulation of memory and the implicit chronicle of family life. Without staging anything, the artist captures what remains there accidentally. By confronting the flow of the river with the immobility of the table, the exterior with the interior, Geneva with Brussels, the artist affirms the value of the everyday, the mundane and the non-event, and invites us to contemplate what usually escapes our gaze.