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Manuela Papeians ’Nocturnes et Variations’

Charline Kervyn Contemporary Art, Voldersstraat 52, Gent / Mon: 14:00 - 18:00, Thu - Fri: 11:30 - 18:00, Sat: 10:00 - 18:00, Sun: 11:00 - 17:00


Manuela Papeians is a Belgian sculptress, born in Bruges on 25 December 1964. She graduated as an architect from the ISA Saint-Luc in Brussels and practised her profession for several years in various Brussels offices before moving abroad in the early 1990s, first to Boston (USA), then to Barranquilla (Colombia) and finally to Paris. In all, she left Belgium for more than ten years. On her return, she resumed her activity as an architect, but this time with a social function to help vulnerable populations.


Drawing, modelling and sculpting have always been part of her world: "I always had this in me", she says. Circumstances make it difficult at first, but her desire persists and it is finally in 2010 that she starts to put her hands in the clay. First at the Atelier de la Ligne d'Horizon, then at the Ecole des Arts de Braine-l'Alleud and finally at the Atelier du Dieweg.


She works clay, which she likes to touch, to make the form emerge from the mass. She likes its suppleness, its slippery nature. She likes to shape it and to see that it sometimes slips away. She soon decides to cast her works in bronze.


Manuela Papeians is not only a figurative sculptress, but above all she is a sculptress of the human nature, a sculptress of joy, of happiness, of emotion... One could say a sculptress of femininity and generosity.


"My hands try to express the emotions that are hidden in the depths of my heart. Sometimes I contemplate, sometimes I dance, sometimes I jump for joy, ... sometimes I think, sometimes I dream, ...

Dancing curves that appear, that assert themselves : to carry you away in your own dreams ? I like to represent the present moment, a moment of life.  Beyond the moment, the movement that continues : perhaps it is simply life that I love?

I try to express the good and the beautiful, like a balm to heal the sorrows of this world or to remind you of the good and the beautiful of this world ? Just to please and to please oneself... "


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