Take Back the Joy: Positivity as an Act of Resistance
In a climate where attention is increasingly driven by outrage, fear, and division, this exhibition proposes another mode of engagement. Rather than amplifying friction, it brings together practices that reshape how we relate to complexity, tension, and one another. Positivity is approached here not as naive optimism or denial, but as a deliberate stance, a way of holding space for questioning, ambiguity, multiplicity, and transformation. Across the works, objects, images, bodies, materials, and colours do not oppose one another, but coexist, overlap, and shift in meaning. Fragments are not resolved into a single narrative; instead, they form constellations in which different temporalities and references remain simultaneously present.
What may at first appear disarmingly open or even light gradually reveals a deeper insistence, a refusal to reduce, to polarise, or to fix meaning too quickly. Some works engage directly with representation and identity, others with the physicality of gesture or the layering of cultural memory, while others create conditions in which perception itself can slow down and recalibrate. Together, they propose a form of resistance that operates on a micro level, not through confrontation, but through attention, care, and subtle shifts in perception. In doing so, the exhibition opens a space where complexity is not something to overcome, but something to inhabit.
Opening Saturday 23 May 2026 | 15.00 - 19.00
Exhibition: 23/05 - 28/06/2026
Penitentenstraat 29, 9000 Gent
Contact us for availability or more information.
desk@barbegallery.be
+32 9 391 39 13