Learning to Say Goodbye, a Ritual

Under the heading Learning to Say Goodbye , Globe Aroma initiates a ritual for artists, art lovers and a network of solidarity. With a loving eye, we document and archive all works of art created and collected in Globe Aroma over 19 years.

“Learning to say goodbye” is an artistic and practical exercise: how do you document a large collection, how do you package paintings and how do you best store and catalog them? How do you make choices, how do you learn to let go, how do you learn to let go of a work?

Learning to Say Goodbye (LTSG) had a brief start in early 2020 (just before the pandemic broke out), in the form of a massive clean-up project. Gradually, it transformed into a giant plunge into our past. This project forces us to take care of our archive and at the same time (re)view the artworks present in our space with love.

WHY LEARNING TO SAY GOODBYE?

We noticed that Globe Aroma’s space was too full, too much and too little organised. We invited the collective mama.brussels (Bernardo Robles Hidalgo) to take a look at our space with an outside eye – as a tidying guru active for some time at Toestand and with a love of maintenance – and to propose a tidying-up plan for the future. Bernardo (together with colleagues Koen Berghmans & Garry Farrelly) points out to us the many works of art that are stored here and there in an unkempt manner. We start a huge project to document, label and archive the works. All this to create more space and at the same time take care of the archives and valorise the artists’ works properly.

HOW DO WE PROCEED?

In collaboration with mama.brussels (Garry Farrelly, Bernardo Robles Hidalgo, Koen Berghmans), Seyma Unlu, Karolien Chromiak, Samuel Vanderveken