Zone de Troc II at Kunstenfestivaldesarts

May 07, 2021 - May 30, 2021

Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels

In Zone de Troc, Pélagie Gbaguidi opens up a participative space in which visitors can deposit or take away objects, stories, drawings, secrets and letters. Zone de Troc – a barter-zone –  dreams up alternative exchanges that can take place during the economic crisis that is sure to follow the Covid-19 pandemic. She also revives the possibility of interactions with others, particularly strangers, that the pandemic has weakened or restructured to adhere to a principle of necessary isolation. The venue – a former hairdresser’s – becomes an incubator for regenerating an ecology of relationships and a new type of economy, using strategies to overturn the established order. Over a period of three weeks, a hairdresser, musicians and a tarot card reader will take turns meeting the public, and once a week an outdoor market-without-objects will also be held. For many years now, Pélagie Gbaguidi has created forms of productions in her artistic practice that contribute to metamorphoses in society. Zone de Troc is part of a reflection on the exchange of useful and symbolic goods that have been liberated from a liberal, monetised economy.