Behind the Curtain

Steel silhouettes with polished rooftops and crystalline windows mirror the striated concrete and red brick walls of an industrial past. Sleek car bodies lie side by side, lined up and waiting for a new departure toward another continent. Light comes across the metal and glass of a thriving vehicle business that gathers cars from all corners of Europe with the aim of shipping them to West Africa.

Through repeated visits to this Cureghem neighborhood in Anderlecht, camera in hand, Francesca Comune gradually earned the trust and respect of those involved in this business. Her work depicts a sociological portrait that probes the human relationships behind these rows of sheet metal and the urban networks they inhabit.

Each image becomes a reflection of a trade where appearance is everything, where a quickly snapped photo on a phone becomes the social contract underpinning the entire circulation of these goods. The metal of the vehicles dematerializes into a stream of numerical data flowing through invisible infrastructures, echoing the excessive global accumulation of digital information.

Francesca Comune’s approach delicately unveils the dynamics of this business with a blend of curiosity and poetry. Behind the Curtain uses symbols deeply embedded in our collective imagination to question these practices. A shoe placed with authority on top of a car’s body refers to the economic forces at play in this market.

The strange combination of numbers and letters scribbled on windshields hints at an esoteric language, widely shared and understood within this microcosm. The vehicles themselves serve as metaphors for speed, performance and consumption.

This exhibition offers a brief glimpse into Francesca Comune’s artistic and documentary project, Behind the Curtain.