01/08/2013 26' 41''
English

Els Opsomer lives and works in Belgium and Senegal. She uses videos and photographs as a means to express the complexity of the world, which is visible in the many layers that make up the urban environment.

Her work springs from the huge archive that she has generated during her constant journeys – a compilation of personal comments and visual reinterpretations of the global reality. Each of her pieces is based on a specific story structured around the interpretative material that makes up this archive: images and reflections that the artist often calls 'survival strategies' or 'messages for my friends'.

Her work has been exhibited at the Witte de With Center in Rotterdam and Robert Miller Gallery in New York, among others. She has participated in biennials in Brussels, Istanbul, Kwangju and Werkleitz, and was resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

SON[I]A talks to Els Opsomer about what travel and territories mean in her way of conceiving art, about how she builds up her archive and how it, in turn, generates her work. It also looks at some of the projects that Els has worked on in the past few years, including 'iMovies', 'Archive Building', and the video '10th of November', presented at the group exhibition 'Avec le temps'.

Son[i]aEls OpsomerSenegalphotographyvideoarchiveAfricapost-colonialism

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