31 jul 2020

Sirah Foighel Brutmann en Eitan Efrat over de verwevenheid van werk en familie tijdens de lockdown

In onze serie "En Nu?" laten makers zien hoe ze zichzelf opnieuw uitvinden

Nurture #2 (Rita) Jacob Wrestling with the Angel

Voor 'En nu?' schrijft Brussels kunstenaarsduo Sirah Foighel Brutmann en Eitan Efrat over de - soms heftige - verwevenheid van werk en familie tijdens het vele samenzijn in de lockdown en hoe dit ook leidt tot gezamenlijk werk. 

Our practice slammed into the current world crisis in the midst of an investigation on the kitchen knife. As for many parents during the confinement, the already artificial borders between work and caretaking of children thinned away. For us, as parents (of Rita 7 and Nilus 3) who also collaborate professionally, the confinement intensified and challenged the entanglement of these daily practices.

These imposed conditions created a unique intimacy that flooded every aspect of our lives with waves of love, care and trust but also of stress, rage and violence from both grownups and children.

Our research had begun with the exhibition When She Spoke at De Brakke Grond, December 2018. It employs the kitchen knife - a utensil that serves an ambiguity of nurture and danger - as a qualitative measurement tool of violence. Through the knife we evaluate tendencies of image making and of reading of images: from the props used to create a “wounding” image; through representations of so-called “terror”; to the ways in which we cut, split and rupture our visual material.


En nu? is an opportunity to show a clip of what we have collected, borrowed and processed with our children. 

Reading from Sheila Heti’s book Motherhood we delve into her look on the kitchen knife as a representation of an inner struggle which is also coupled up with the biblical story of Jacob wrestling the angel.

The wrestling of Jacob with the angel is a confrontation that is ongoing, to the point of exhaustion. At the break of dawn when apparently the angel must disappear again, he asks to be let go. Before Jacob agrees he asks him for a blessing. 

The angel blesses Jacob and gives him a name that defines him as “god-fighter”. 

A life changing wrestle that defines who Jacob is. 

Rembrandt’s uncanny version of this event in his painting Jacob Wrestling with the Angel from 1659, makes us think further on relationships between struggle and blessing, nurturing and confrontation, destruction and care.

Nurture #2 (Rita) Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
Nurture #2 (Rita) Jacob Wrestling with the Angel

Meer over Sirah Foighel Brutmann en Eitan Efrat

de Brakke Grond vraagt zich af: En nu?

Met de serie En nu? geven we een kijkje in de hoofden van Vlaamse muzikanten, theatermakers en kunstenaars en hoe zij zichzelf opnieuw uitvinden in deze tijd. Wat voor soort werk staat er op stapel, en welke creatieve manieren hebben zij bedacht om dit met hun publiek te delen?

Ga mee op ontdekkingstocht naar een mogelijke post-pandemische kunstwereld, met iedere week een nieuwe online aflevering waarvan de makers zelf de vorm bepalen.