a soft protest
brunelle dias
7/9/23 – 30/9/23
a soft protest explores intentionality as a form of protest within the everyday. It accounts dias’ daily life through painting as a means of breaking down the notion that protest only performs in grand gestures. Rather, dias posits that observing and reflecting intentionally on the small things, helps one to connect with their present context which can, albeit gradually, lead to big change.
While being present in fleeting ordinariness may seem like complacency or inaction in a world that needs direct actionable change, this soft protest explores that protest could be a way of life, not merely a yearly march. Which in effect, would bring a deep awareness of our protesting intentions.
To dias, protest comes in varied forms within the context of the everyday; observation, interaction and intention. In a soft protest, she takes time to observe and study the relationships and the subjects of her life by painting which she would otherwise overlook when rallying. She thinks...the act of ‘taking time to reflect’ is in and of itself both the act of ‘protesting’ and ‘painting’.
She then ponders: could painting and protesting two sides of the same coin?
brunelle dias is a painter based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She completed her Masters of Visual Art at AUT, School of Art and Design, in 2021. She is interested in the intimacy between figure and ground and the interconnection between past and present. Recent exhibitions include The Realists at Depot Artspace in 2023 and The Local Migrant at RM Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau; Idyll at Page Galleries, Te Whanganui-A-Tara; and a revisit of introspective fieldworks: the everyday in flux at Nathan Homestead, Tāmaki Makaurau, and the way things are at The Physics Room, Ōtautahi, all 2022.
Design by Harris Wilson
Sponsored by Parrotdog