ELECTRA SIMON “CONFESIONES” 11-20/09

Bate Social Store is pleased to present ‘Confesiones’, a ten-day site-specific project by London-based artist Electra Simon curated by Martin Mayorga that asks: What if we are nothing more than the stories we tell ourselves?

Every memory, and how we choose to carry it, shapes our personal mythology, but what happens when those memories are reflected back to us in unexpected ways? Confesiones explores this question through an evolving body of work, where confession becomes not an act of repentance, but a shared moment of presence. It is a space in which private reflection gives way to co-creation, that arises from a moment of witnessing.

The exhibition unfolds across two rooms. One features a participatory installation developed in collaboration with Bate Studio, drawing on the architecture of the traditional confessional. Within it, the artist and visitor sit side by side, separated by a screen. Visitors are invited to speak freely, while the artist listens and responds through rapid sketching and note-taking.

The second room functions as a working studio. Here, past works are presented alongside new drawings and paintings developed throughout the ten-day period.

These new works are not literal transcriptions, but symbolic responses, ambiguous and emotionally charged, that reflect the shared emotiones and essences of the stories and thoughts shared.

The mirror that the artist can create is very different to that of the priest, or the therapist. The crucial difference is not just that this encounter is unstructured by the dictates of religion or science. It is that, in becoming present to one another through art, Simon and her subjects build a shared symbolic world. Unconstrained by language, creative media allow Simon to reflect experiences that defy words. “With words,” John Berger writes, “we cannot get nearer to them than a map can get to a landscape.” For the subject, this feels like being contained, without being disciplined.

• Dr. Nikita Kaur Simpson