To you,
Consider this a letter that questions the way histories are written. Consider this a question, because I wonder, do you know where your origins lie?
Humankind’s collective genesis is equally obscured, plural and unsure: fertile ground for mythical grandness and magical thinking. For a vast array of stories and views on the world can co-exist, but one cannot ignore their distortion. Who are they told for, and who are the ones telling them?
A one-sided transmission perhaps. So where does that leave the others? Creatures not befitting that armour are left at open sea.
A lineage of seamen travelling from womb to womb. From fox to boar, from womxn to ibex.
Tom Hallet’s work is fuelled by a relentless quest for representation, recognition and acknowledgement. He does so first and foremost by unearthing the dynamics at play through his own psychological inheritance. On a journey to unravel his sense of belonging, he scans his family’s narratives, anecdotes and remembrances for blind spots and inconsistencies. Encapsulated small corners and crooks that have been left unwritten, in which he can sow his own lifelines. Because, if he wasn’t preceded by someone like him, how can he find proof of his own existence?
The artist’s personal query into queerness and coming-of-age therefore was longtime channelled through the father figure. His father as a mirror, his skin being a map - impregnated with skin folds covering up family secrets, with scars, dots and birthmarks leading up to other questions. It’s his father that took center stage in his early artistic output. An enigmatic protagonist onto which projections, assumptions and fantasies could take shape.
Hallet’s art was and remains underwritten by a text-based practice, functioning as scripts, as backbones, or as letters addressed to himself or someone else. Previous work moved along video, sculpture and installation, and naturally incorporated reflective material: be they shiny surfaces in which viewers could retrieve themselves amongst Hallet’s words, moments of silence as welcoming spaces, or performed memories so universal and deeply human that they conveyed a sense of recognition for every pair of eyes wafting by. The practice of writing, of condensing into words, is interlinked with Hallet’s rich, vivid and voluptuous imagery.
Rumbling through the foliage, we follow his steps as he embraces and becomes at ease in the world of shadows, in the world of freedom. Through his drawing, dense forests appear. Mysterious bushes, elegantly dripping patches of water, dark and crusty tree trunks brimming with life. What seems to repel at first sight, or cause for fright, unveils itself to be a soft-hearted and soothing atmosphere. Inhabited by creatures who once suffered, the forest is sexually charged, in a celebration of solidarity and self-governance.
The drawings appear in sequence, they form a series of letters dedicated to queer icons, to forefront fighters and activists, but also to close family members. On them, chimerical sceneries take shape through delicate pencil lines, which creep up close to each other “en masse” so as to convey darkness and lush vegetation, at other times dispersing to reveal tranquil open places of rest. Hallet proposes a space of healing, inhabited by the bodies and souls onto which trauma has been inflicted. Their suffering has coalesced with the soil on which they tred, to mourn and stand united, to recover and to regenerate. Within this sheltered space, a “Huis Clos”, desires and appetites can roam freely.
Sculptures carrying botanicals in various stages of decay and rebirth, introduce a new kind of tenderness. Their skin-like texture hints at body-snatched trophies, carried around and put on display by those convention-seeking, enraged and cowardice souls who conceive violence as an act of heroism. Yet again, it might as well be the skin of the grandmother you just buried, of whom you always pondered that you never knew her entire life story.
The force of light and shadow forever at play, forever in tension, like salt and sweet rivers that can never trespass. Standing on the cusp of these two flows, it’s becoming ever so clear that lucidity is coming from the shadow world, the world of the night, the world of the free.
It’s inviting you to come in, but know,
they were here first.
Sincerely yours,
Evelyn
