“No” shouts the red paint scrawled across the floor at the entrance. No entry? I wonder as I step tentatively into the gallery. The word appears again and again – always painted in red – across the large sheet of fabric that divides the first gallery space. Later, it decorates Delaine Le Bas’s skirt in a photograph in which she stands in a field, holding a placard that states: “No state control.”
It could seem unwelcoming, but printed amid the prevailing colours of pink, blue and yellow, repeating like a catchy pop song, it does something else. “It is ‘no’ as an affirmation,” says Le Bas. “It is like, ‘No, then, we mustn’t let them steal our joy.’” It’s a shout of protection, like a child stubbornly refusing to relinquish something precious. The “no” is not directed at us, but beyond us, creating a boundary that suspends reality for a moment and cocoons the viewer in layers of soft fabric and folklore.
