‘Just Another Ray’ arose from a series of events that will be familiar to many artists and creatives; that of rejection by publishers (or other artistic institutions); for Vande Veire, this became the impetus to open up her work — consisting of images of handmade decors— to friends and family, who left comments on the work and its contents; these comments prompted a new sort of work:
“I started creating a visual archive based on themes I had extracted from their comments.
This resulted in a grid of images in which each image is connected with the images that surround it thus creating one long complex network of associations that I could use as a framework for a play in and through which one tries to overcome the experience of rejection by the power of imagination”
‘Just Another Ray’ is comprised of 2 volumes. The 1st volume takes the form of a soft cover book (29,5 x 20,5 cm, 64 pages). It is written as though it were the script for a play. The reader is initially introduced to characters; Philip (P), Ray, Narrator (N) and Interviewer (I) and 7 symbols that signify certain types of pauses in speech, which can be found throughout the texts in this book. Each chapter has a title referring to a particular subject within the play ie; ‘Spider’, ‘Mary’ and ‘That Hidden Thing.’
The 2nd volume is in a horizontal newspaper-like format (21 x 29,5 cm, 24 not numbered pages) consisting of archival images all in of similar size and within the same row and column format. These b/w images all seemingly connect to each other visually through its subject yet each one also appears to be from a different context. The result is a unique and playful work that uses experiences of rejection and vulnerability as transformative processes.
Ed/200, Antwerpen (2021)
