Michiel Hendryckx “14 Redheads and 2 Eyes on Europe”

Flanders Center

This event has ended.

In fall of 2007, a rather awkward scene appeared in the city of Ghent, Belgium: 14 portraits of women with red hair were installed on a large office building. Inspired by Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting of a redhead female, Michiel Hendryckx, a Flemish photographer, created the installation for the British Vision exhibition’s PR campaign. In the UK, redheads are given mean stereotypes or names such as “carrot top” or “Duracell”. In fact, the 14 that were photographed were no exception, as they shared their stories of childhood teasing. Ironically, in the US and mainland Europe, red hair color has become popular as more people dye it in its different hues of the color.
In conjunction with the above series, the “2 Eyes on Europe” presents images that were created by Hendryckx for the movie “27x27x27”. For this movie, Hendryckx along with photographer Johan Jacobs and cameraman Luc Vrydaghs, toured Europe and asked 27 artists from 27 countries on what they think is the most valuable masterpiece in art history. The photographs that capture various scenes of Europe were taken to accompany the movie, and were exhibited in Brussels in 2007.
The exhibition will feature 14 color portrait photographs and 40 monochrome photographs.