With Apparentia, PLUS-ONE Projects presents the first solo exhibition of the photographic work of Clarisse M (Ghent, 2004 – 2023).

The exhibition was curated by Dirk Braeckman, her artistic mentor and one of the founders of the Clarisse M Foundation. After a long and difficult struggle with mental health, Clarisse M took her own life, under guidance, at the end of 2023. She leaves behind an impressive visual body of work that offers an intimate glimpse into a highly complex inner world and a fragile process of self-development. Clarisse translates her ongoing search for beauty and meaning into enigmatic self-portraits and abstracted fragmentary images of texture and matter, printed in graphic black and white. Through her distinctive use of long exposure times, she depicts herself as a dreamlike apparition that never fully materializes. In a motion devoid of grip, her body is spun, doubled, and distorted into a swirling apparentia. The movement suggests a dizziness in which all reason is cast aside, and both Clarisse and the image fall into freefall—where mind and matter merge.

In Clarisse’s refusal to conform to the photography’s definitive arrest of movement and time lies her experience and spirit. A form of creative resistance against the norm. In this way, Clarisse not only creates a personal mental space but also a resonant chamber where we, as viewers, can let our own imagination, identity, and emotional world echo. The Latin titles she gives her works open a suggestive line to classical stories with tragic protagonists and archetypal plots. Clarisse M thus places her personal quest within the broader human search for the condition humaine. Because we too seek answers to the lure and fear of finitude.

Apparentia presents a first selection from the intriguing work of Clarisse M, an exceptional artistic talent who had only just begun to glimpse the light of life—and made us dream of so much more.

Artists: Clarisse M