part of SIGN 1988-2018 (WIP)

"She wanted a Memphis rug so badly."

Edgar en Lucia - 1993

Edgar and Lucia exhibit with "she wanted a Memphis rug so badly" in Sign. The gallery is located in a former butcher's shop. This space still exudes the atmosphere of its original purpose. Edgar and Lucia based their themes on this specific space and brought them together in a fictional character: a butcher's wife. The exhibition is built around this woman.



"I lived for my butcher, the business and the family. He chopped up the meat, I gave it to my flesh and blood. (laughs) My butcher, God be merciful to him, wanted me to be subservient. Always between those four walls; the business was at home. I looked up to my husband, what he managed to get out of a cow... (she removes a speck of dust from the floor) I looked down on myself, seeing nothing more than the bare tiles on the wall. When my husband had bought a car, he took me out. We took rides to the countryside and instead of the slaughter cattle at home, I would see peacefully grazing cows and pretty pink pigs everywhere. That calmed me down. (laughs) I sometimes think, at home everything was dead. (silence) I only understand now that things have a soul, now that my husband has died and my daughter has left. (silence) I sold the butcher's shop and gave this to myself as a gift. (Pointing to the floor) Imagine if I had bought this before. (She starts bursting with laughter) How strange my butcher would have looked: among the frozen half pigs and the sterile tiles this Memphis rug..."

Her life falls into three distinct worlds. The cruelty and coldness in her social life, her escape from it by glorifying living nature, and her longing for culture, which for her is as flat as a Memphis rug. Edgar and Lucia have shaped the tension between these three worlds in the exhibition by decorating the space with the still-present elements of the old butcher's shop with installations and objects, drawings, woodcuts, photographs and paintings.