Bernadette Despujols, The brighter the light
27 MARCH - 7 MAY 2026
Newchild Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
"Light in the tropics does not diffuse gently across the landscape. It strikes with force, carving the world into sharp contrasts—radiance beside shadow, warmth beside unease. In the paintings of Bernadette Despujols, this condition becomes more than atmosphere; it becomes a way of understanding human experience itself.
Born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, in 1986, Despujols grew up in a country where beauty and instability increasingly coexisted. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Venezuela underwent profound political transformation under the governments of Hugo Chávez and later Nicolás Maduro. What followed was a prolonged economic and social crisis that would eventually trigger one of the largest mass migrations in the Western Hemisphere. Like millions of Venezuelans, Despujols left a homeland marked simultaneously by warmth, memory, and growing uncertainty. That sense of duality—of attachment and rupture—continues to permeate her work.
The exhibition takes its title from a Jungian proposition: the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Despujols understands this not only as a psychological truth but also as a literal condition of tropical geography."
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