Viviana Raciti, curator of Laterale Film festival (2020)
about Morgen
“Looking at Tomorrow with a slanted and precise glance. A morning still yet to come, unscheduled actions to be done, but, like during a ceremony, with a devoted presence. So are these children, whose acts complete each other out: awakening, getting ready, playing, taking shelter. This incoming revolution is contained in the gesture of one – who could be many – who is not his or her own «Self» yet, but is already forming a community. The future as preparation, as the willful thrust before the diving – a diving whose consequences are still unknown, but whose premises are visible. The future as curiosity and discovery of each other’s bodies, both with differences and similarities. The future as a spin, as a challenge to run the world, to make it rain, to go to sleep, waiting for a new tomorrow.”
Stefan Vanthuyne, writer, researcher and photographer (2023)
about The (ab)Use of Beauty
“Words and images have always had a complex but fascinating relationship, and that relationships can manifest itself in many ways. As a writer on photography I’ve always been interested in how writing can help an imagemaker to think about his or her work, how it can be a form of reflection. [...] When I met Bo Vloors she had already made the photographs that were to become the subject of The (ab)Use of Beauty - Chapter One. The photographs were made in the French Alps, where she had lived for some time. At that point in the project, it was clear that she felt a frustration about the aesthetics of her images, choices relating to form and content that made for pleasing photographs, images that were what we, as viewers who appreciate artistic photography, would call ‘beautiful’. But for her, this ‘beauty’, the aesthetics that seem to be inherently linked to the medium stood in the way of a truthful representation of her own lived experience. Disturbed by this, she had started writing an essay that spoke of this discrepancy between the images and the reality, filling the gap between the two with thoughts and questions about the desire for beauty and about the use of aesthetics in photographic imagery. Taking prompts from my own experience with the masterclass in writing, our conversation was about how this writing could become a form of mediation between her and the work, between the artist and the images – images that to her own disillusion were not free from photographic tropes about beauty. It became clear that this contemplation, this questioning of herself as an artist and of the medium of photography, not only would be essential to the work, but that through this fascinating dialogue between words and images it would become the work. Vloors’s writing is free and associative, honest and unpretentious; the way she reflects on her own practice as a photographer is reminiscent of the Japanese photographers, who have always been extremely open and eloquent in their thinking and writing on their medium – something Western photographers have always been more cautious about. Vloors’s essay is both sincere and meaningful. In the installation of The (ab)Use of Beauty - Chapter One, she presented the text in a visual way, on a screen where it scrolled down at a slow pace, in the form of a video. It shows how she is aware of how images and words are not merely reserved for the page, but can also step into an installation, a spatial environment where they can engage in a visual dialogue. Since our conversation I’ve been curious to see how she would continue her research, how she would continue to invite us to see and to read, giving us an unusual but wonderful insight in her thoughts and questions, and how her work would continue to develop in such a way.”
Gilles Hellemans, visual artist and curator of Blue Bench sessions (2024)
about The Blue Bench Society
“I asked Bo Vloors if she would like to participate in Blue Bench Sessions #4 with her work Collecting Time, a project that explores slowing down and the passage of time through snails - slowly and steadily - and various rhythms that intersect and coexist. Although this specific work didn’t end up on the Blue Bench, its essence lives on in her new creation. This work builds upon her previous explorations of slowing down, human relationships, and the role of the color blue within the sound work of The Blue Bench Society. Drawing from her background in photography, Vloors creates tactile and visual images in our minds, where we follow divers characters, each with their own story, subtly weaving relationships with the space around us, with each other, and with the all-encompassing blue. This blue, full of longing and distance, resonates with the descriptions in Rebecca Solnit’s “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”. Put on your headphones and let yourself be carried away by the story unfolding before you, where each facet reveals a new dimension of blue.”