Ziltes: Bernadette Messiaen

The visual art in Ziltes was created from a mixture of oxygen and salt during the active time in the artist's practice. The creative result suggests a conscious and radical act of resistance by the artist as a human being against linear time, a time that moves forward too fast for anyone who captures life. Virginie Platteau wrote nine poems (FR/ NL /EN) that are scattered throughout the pages and written in dialog with the artworks. Bernadette Messiaen has been practicing art for over forty years, however this is the first time she is coming out as an artist. Text in English, French and Dutch. AUTHOR: Virginie Platteau is a freelance cultural journalist who writes about art, poetry and literature. For years she has been fascinated by the power of silence. As a silence supervisor for schools and as a food forest pioneer, she wants to revalue natural peace, space and silence. She is a director of the silent movement vzw Waerbeke and curator of the cultural city festival Zinderende Stilte in Mechelen. She is an editor at literary magazine Deus ex Machina and regularly writes for websites, newspapers and magazines such as De Standaard, Tertio, Rekto:Verso, Poëziekrant, De Lage Landen (Ons Erfdeel). SELLING POINTS: . Printed on two different papers: in a complex interplay between the paper for reproducing the artworks in relation to the thin paper for the poetry . The complex architecture of the book with six three-folds and one four-fold creates different portals and adds a refreshing take on leafing through pages . A gem for photography and art book lovers, a collector's object in an edition of 450 copies . Ziltes is an artists' book inspired by the complex architecture of Japanese artists' books with over half the pages in the book being empty to create a slowness in wandering through the book. Because of these different aspects, the reader is "forced" to take their time in order to fully feel the experience of the book 95 colour illustrations