Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz - Fog Is My Drug

A sensory journey through sight and invisibility

In the video installation El Cristal Es Mi Piel, musician Aérea Negrot sings a song she co-wrote with the artists. The song gives voice to Madrid's Palacio de Cristal and its colonial past. With its transparent architecture, this glass palace, built in 1887 for the colonial exhibition Exposición de las Filipinas, symbolises a colonial gaze focused on observation and control. Boudry and Lorenz explore how the building can be confronted with this history, depicting it as a ‘ghost’ seeking revenge - cracking, leaking and letting nature invade. Using mirrors, they offer new perspectives, while smoke gradually obscures the palace's transparency, challenging its original function.

What if not everything needs to be understood? In Fog Is My Drug, artists Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz take you to a space where visibility is not a given and opacity becomes a strength. Inspired by the ideas of philosopher Édouard Glissant, they explore in Nest the power of the unknown, the fluid and the intangible. The exhibition questions our craving for control and overview, and invites a new way of looking - or precisely: not looking. With references to queer nightlife and the mysterious club Laak next door, the visitor is immersed in a world of fog, reflection and distortion. An experience in which differences are not smoothed over, but rather allowed to coexist.