Up Close #3: the sublime

Pelumi: If we imagine the end of the world, would that final light be our last sight of the sun?

Welcome, this is Up Close a series of intimate sound experiences at TENT Rotterdam. In this edition we will be speaking with the curator of our current exhibition at TENT; Rawad Baaklini. This exhibition is all about sunsets, romance and the things said between the lines, schemergebieden and transitions. My name is Pelumi Adejumo, I am the editor and Storyteller at TENT. In between this conversation with Rawad you will hear fragments of a short story between two lovers and a poster across the street written by Ciska Meister.

The title of the current exhibition is: Sun don’t rush to be red, son don’t rush to be read. For those not reading this line but hearing it aloud, the difference between the two phrases lies in the first “line,” where sun and the second line is the plea of a father to his son. Starting with the first ‘Sun’, the line pleads with the sun not to sink below the horizon just yet, or at least to ease slowly into this transition.

Rawad: With a topic like sunsets with its aesthetic metaphors and [our] understanding of it; it’s a cheesy topic, I’m diving into the cheesiness from the beginning.

Pelumi: We are speaking about sunsets but also about the end of the world, about this catastrophic end of the world where the sky is red as well, can you talk about that?

Rawad: There’s a hypothesis that is a kind of bedrock to the exhibition. That if we imagine the end of the world, I think it’s going to be one last sunset. So every time we look at the sunset, it’s a small end of the world. A second important idea in the show is the one of Romance, the idea of romance comes from the idea of waiting.

This is something that Guillaume Aubry, who is one of the artists in the exhibition, and I took from Fragment of A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes, who has a chapter in this book called waiting. And he talks about the figure of the true lover, who is the true lover? And then he says that the true lover is the person who waits.

So I’m the true lover because I’m waiting for the other person’s reply to my text, for the other person to call me back, to tell me that they have time to see me. And what do you do in front of a sunset? You wait. And so that’s something that I hope to achieve in the show, is this idea of maybe waiting in front of an artwork for something to happen, which transforms the audience and everyone who comes into the exhibition to lovers, because they’re waiting.

Pelumi: And I was wondering how we might understand romance not only as intimacy, but also as a strategy for survival. When everything else collapses.

Rawad: When there is love and there’s romance, there’s conversation and with romance there is always this negotiation between one and the other. And yeah, I’m hoping that the works insinuate that.

On a Sunday afternoon, temperatures suddenly drop

Wrapped in a blanket, I glare out the window in the way that only a troubled lover can.

I warm my hands on a poster depicting a sunset

Glued on a billboard across the street

A deep red that meets a warm orange,

which trickles down into a soft yellow.

The gradient surrounds the silhouette of a palm tree.

It is because of a lust for romance that you and I stay in each other’s orbit

My 12 – megapixel lens captures and compresses

the print of a sunset before it makes its way to you.

I stare at the image, only to find that it has lost

its meaning on its digital journey.

I delete it from our chat and type

“You will have to come and see it in real life.”

That same evening

You wrap your bike lock around a leg of the billboard

The match runs across the striker and we are once again aflame

The sunset glares at my window

It observes the smoke that escapes through the frame.

Pelumi: And the second line. Son, don’t rush to be read. Suggests a father’s plea to his son not to rush either. Not to become too consumable or notorious too quickly. Could you tell me more about this plea and about your intention for the exhibition, from your perspective as a curator? Why go in on insisting on patience?

Rawad: I read a text recently. The writer talks about ambition. The definition of ambition is a  strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work. In this definition, there’s no reference to the self, to individualism, to capitalism, to being successful. It only says that ambition is a desire to achieve something. We all have ambitions which are great but we need to take our time with them. We should not run towards fame, at least not too quickly.

Pelumi: When we first spoke, you mentioned that you curate in the way you would write an essay, and you said that each artwork functions as a paragraph or argument within that essay. And in this way, every work is integral like important in formulating the whole, addressing side questions, cultural context, counter arguments. This takes time to read and unfold before arriving at a conclusion. I wanted to know if you could tell more about this methodology and why it’s important to use as a curator, or how it helps you.

Rawad: I realized that I need something to land on, and I need a methodology that guides me throughout picking artworks. When I remove one artwork from the selection of artworks, I need to feel that something is missing. That there’s a perspective on the question that is missing that is not there, and therefore this work needs to be there. So that’s my curatorial methodology, the exhibition is an essay and each artwork is an important argument to write this essay.

On a bright Saturday morning

You and I observe the poster of a setting sun

from the comfort of my sheets

“It’s tacky” you say.

Your giggle is a punch to my stomach.

“It’s real” I reply.

I run a match across the striker

we are an ever-burning sun.

Here, we are indefinite. Until,

your departure hurls us back into temporality.

Every time you close my front door behind you

I run my fingers across your absence

It is a thin layer of a charcoal

It spreads out and covers every surface around me.

Every time you leave, your absence crawls

across the street and into the sunset

Your withdrawal extinguishes color

Allowing cold into my home, leaving me pale.

Pelumi: I want to speak more about specific works in the exhibition we have. Speaking of hiding and showing, we have a grindr sunset…

Rawad: ‘Grindr Sunsets’ a work by Czar Kristoff JP. Who is a Filipino artist that realized that in the Philippines on grinder. Which is this gay sex app, there’s a lot of men that instead of putting, a picture of themselves or their torso or their sculpted bodies like it’s usually done, they actually put pictures of sunsets.

So he asked these men: did you take the picture of the sunset that you have on your profile and why? Most of them answered that they feel that the sunset represents them. So I find it interesting here to talk about this idea of queerness and gayness in relation to this motif of sunset and this work does that.

Pelumi: So there’s another work by: Alaa Abu Asad. Can you tell us about that one?

Rawad: It’s basically, Alaa found a film that is a 30 minute pornographic film from this French porn maker, and it’s about a French twink, that, is walking through the streets of a city in northern Africa. This French twink falls in love with one of the Arab men. And then he asks him to go with him to France.

But the Arab man replies: why would I do that, I don’t know anyone? And this idea of this, Western promise, specifically the French promise, is debunked here.

Pelumi: Of [sexual] freedom.

Rawad: Yeah, exactly. And this kind of idea of that Europe is better and with what Alaa is doing is that he’s using the footage, weaving his own narrative within it. I like it because it shows a different idea. It shows that we Arabs are  not close minded or are in tune with our sexuality or are free and open.

On a Thursday evening I wake from our shared dream

my front door clicks into the frame and I know

We are irreversibly smothered

Your departure is final

I step to an open window

your absence has crawled

across the street and into the sunset

The poster is drained

The deep red warm orange and soft yellow have paled

into an unforthcoming white

All that remains is the silhouette

of a palm tree surrounded by snow.

It reaches for me with a trembling wind

It tickles the leaves of the palm tree

tickles the hair on my head

And then, falls silent.

No image is immune to decay

and neither are we.

Pelumi: And then I also wanted to talk about ‘Death is but a sunset.’

Rawad: So, Sunsetting by Ginevra Petrozzi is a three part installation. Where, first she talks about this, sunsetting and technology, for example: She is projecting an image on the plasma TV and what we know from the plasma TV is that if you leave it on for a long time, the image burns on the screen, and it’s a small death of a pixel. So that takes us back to this idea of small deaths in relation to sunsets.

Pelumi: I noticed that some of the artworks you picked have a more theoretical or technical focus on sunsets, but in a way that actually only emphasizes almost the omnipresence of the sun. Or like this sublime idea of nature. I find it striking how these works use modern techniques to arrive at something so poetic.

Rawad: This exhibition comes from a need to encounter the sublime, a personal need to encounter the sublime. Encountering the sublime has its spiritual aspect to it. And I’m constantly searching for the spirituality that I have to say: I cannot find it in the Netherlands. In a place where everything is manmade, we tend to feel that we are invincible and that we can do everything. And I started to feel that. And that scared me because I lost a bit of my spirituality. And not that I am religious, but I want to cling on to a certain spirituality.

Pelumi: So in a way, in your essai, you’re contrasting technology and this idea of what is manmade with the sublime of nature.

Rawad: Exactly, exactly.

I wake up on a Tuesday to a glowing warmth

It’s source is unknown to me

My eyes examine the interior of my home

Before they arrive at the sight of my sunset

Restored.

Suddenly drenched in color

Deeply saturated

Full and bright

I run out of my home and onto the street

My fingertip grazes the surface and leaves a mark

in the wet softer yellow

My head turns in all directions and are just in time

to escape my peripheral vision.

Pelumi: Thank you Rawad for the conversation. The exhibition ‘Sun, Don’t Rush to be Red. Son, Don’t Rush to be Read’ is on view until February 2026. My last question is for you, listener: Do you have any advice for heartbroken lovers on the couch, who feel lonely and unnoticed when the sun sets?

Please, send in your advice, plus your [picture of the] sunset of the day on our Instagram at @tentrotterdam