Crying could be a solvent: Soraya Abdelhouaret & Shervin/e Sheikh Rezaei

Crying could be a solvent: Soraya Abdelhouaret & Shervin/e Sheikh Rezaei

Het Paviljoen – Eye Becomes Water

Location: Het Paviljoen, Louis Pasteurlaan 2, 9000 Ghent Dates: March 6 – March 28, 2025

Please reach out to Het Paviljoen on Instagram or via email at hetpaviljoen@hogent.be for a visit.

Bringing together works by Soraya Abdelhouaret and Shervin/e Sheikh Rezaei, Crying could be a solvent seeks to explore the notion of waiting in relation to the practice of alchemy. With their distinct visual languages, both artists draw connections between material transformation and ideas of devotion and love. The space of Het Paviljoen becomes a vessel for dialogue on interpersonal love and the love of the material. Taking its title from Gabriel Gauthier’s poem, Crying could be a solvent explores longing, and the internal processes that occur within.

The laboratory, derived from the Latin words “labor” (work) and “ora” (prayer), lies at the heart of the alchemical practice. It is a space where practitioners transform unusual materials into new states. Here, love becomes the “prima materia” from which the transformation begins. Both of the artists, engaging in a subtle conversation, invite us to rethink how emotions take shape through transmutation and decay. Glass becomes a central element in their correspondence. Abdelhouaret uses glass to collect and fuse wine, symbolising tears, transforming it through chemical processes into something new, while Rezaei alters the transparency of window glass, incorporating a drawing that evokes the ecstasy of the amorous and the communion with the divine. The transformation of wine, a symbol of indulgence, devotion, and love, produces connections between biological decay and metaphorical shifts. At the centre of the exhibition space, in Rezaei’s work, the invitation “Please, serve yourself” is both an offering and a farewell.

Soraya Abdelhouaret (b.1998) lives and works in Paris. She is a graduate of the Beaux-arts du Nord and the Beaux-arts de Paris. Her work is directly linked to the question of temporality, and her pieces almost always have a self-destructive or even corrosive dimension. Using low-cost scientific experiments, the artist sets up a bi-reality between mineral materials and disparate materials.

Shervin/e Sheikh Rezaei (b.1994) lives and works in Brussels. In her multimedia practice she explores the contrast between the fluidity and invasiveness of nature/humanity and the controlled and impersonal language of technology. An attraction to the irrational and emotional, took her from architecture to the autonomous visual arts.

Crying could be a solvent is part of Eye becomes water, an exhibition and public programme curated by Daphné Charitos, Natalija Gucheva, Abel Hartooni, Yasemin Köker, Temitayo Olalekan, and Jean Watt. Drawing from the history of Het Paviljoen, which served as the waiting room for pregnant patients at the historic Bijloke hospital Eye becomes water explores waiting not as a passive or neutral act, but as one that engages multiple temporalities, bodily experiences and power dynamics.