During the Antwerp Art Weekend, IBASHO will exclusively pre-open their brand new gallery IN-DEPENDANCE. Their first exhibition is ’Where Silence Meets Me’ by Elizabeth Alderliesten (°1972) & Vera van Almen (°1986). Both are very talented Dutch artists, who have graduated from the Foto Academie in Amsterdam and have developed a very personal visual language to explore their inner selves and to embrace silence.

For Elizabeth Alderliesten, silence helps yo connect with her authentic self. Vera van Almen seeks out silence to search for something that is not there and to visualise this absence. ‘Where Silence Meets Me’ is an invitation to experience a sense of stillness through Alderliesten’s and Van Almen’s works and to explore our new art space.

Elizabeth Alderliesten will show her series ‘Remember who you once were’ in which her photographic works convey an inner journey in which she delves into the depths of personal transformation and self-discovery. She explores alienation of the self and the challenge of reconnecting with one's original identity. Vera van Almen's artworks feel like enigmas of absence, a quest for the intangible, a journey to states of being that she cannot rationally grasp. Her camera-less practice challenges the conventional notion of control by embracing unexpected results of chance as an integral element of her artistic process. Her images, devoid of literal representation, invite viewers to contemplate the unseen and unknown. Both artists will be present during the opening.

IN-DEPENDANCE is a new art gallery established by the owners of IBASHO.

IBASHO's program is mainly focussed on collaborations with and exhibitions by talented photographers from Japan and beyond. But over the years, they've encountered numerous photographers whose artistic work aligns with our aesthetics, even if these works aren't directly linked to Japan. The urge grew more and more to create a space for these artists and showcase their work.

This has led them to open their new gallery IN-DEPENDANCE, in addition to IBASHO, dedicated to these artists. IBASHO and IN-DEPENDANCE will coexist with each other, and over the next years, the relationship between these spaces will form and cement itself in the Antwerp art scene.