HUSH-A-BYE
- EXHIBITION DATE : MAY 17 - JUN 30, 2024
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“Hush-A-Bye. Childhood is but a dream” is an exhibition that reimagines childhood—not as a sanctuary of innocence, but as a delicate dream threaded with unseen wounds. Composed in five acts, Oscar Villegas-Paez’s body of work gently dismantles the romantic myth of childhood, revealing it as something far more fragile, more complex. What emerges is not a nostalgic ode, but a quiet elegy to the unspoken pain we carry from our earliest years.
Rather than seeking outward, the artist listens inward. He attunes himself to the echoes of children’s voices—not only in Bangkok, where this work took form, but in New York, Paris, Athens, and Dublin. The locations shift, but the pulse remains. There is a universal rhythm to suffering. It begins in the womb with the heartbeat of the mother—our first sonic memory—and continues in the cries of the child, asking not only for comfort, but for justice, connection, and recognition.
Each act of Hush-a-Bye unfolds like a scene in a tragedy. And yet, within this grief lies beauty. Within each photograph, tenderness. The stillness speaks louder than words. The silence is not empty—it is full of feeling.
Throughout the exhibition, the artist returns to the body—the body of the child, the mother, the earth itself. He draws delicate but poignant connections between them: the heartbeat of the mother and the planetary pulse; the newborn’s cry and the quiet disappearance of a wounded world. In this cosmology, pain is collective. Injustice echoes. Sound carries.
What makes Hush-a-Bye deeply moving is not its portrayal of trauma, but the dignity with which it holds space for it. The work does not sensationalize. It does not offer easy consolation. It invites us simply to bear witness—to remain present, to listen.
In the end, Hush-a-Bye is a lullaby not meant to lull us to sleep, but to awaken us. A song for the unheard. A prayer for those still carrying childhood pain beneath adult skin. A reminder that behind every silence, a heartbeat waits to be heard. And perhaps that is enough. To listen—and to respond.
“Hush-A-Bye. Childhood is but a dream” is an exhibition that reimagines childhood—not as a sanctuary of innocence, but as a delicate dream threaded with unseen wounds. Composed in five acts, Oscar Villegas-Paez’s body of work gently dismantles the romantic myth of childhood, revealing it as something far more fragile, more complex. What emerges is not a nostalgic ode, but a quiet elegy to the unspoken pain we carry from our earliest years.
Rather than seeking outward, the artist listens inward. He attunes himself to the echoes of children’s voices—not only in Bangkok, where this work took form, but in New York, Paris, Athens, and Dublin. The locations shift, but the pulse remains. There is a universal rhythm to suffering. It begins in the womb with the heartbeat of the mother—our first sonic memory—and continues in the cries of the child, asking not only for comfort, but for justice, connection, and recognition.
Each act of Hush-a-Bye unfolds like a scene in a tragedy. And yet, within this grief lies beauty. Within each photograph, tenderness. The stillness speaks louder than words. The silence is not empty—it is full of feeling.
Throughout the exhibition, the artist returns to the body—the body of the child, the mother, the earth itself. He draws delicate but poignant connections between them: the heartbeat of the mother and the planetary pulse; the newborn’s cry and the quiet disappearance of a wounded world. In this cosmology, pain is collective. Injustice echoes. Sound carries.
What makes Hush-a-Bye deeply moving is not its portrayal of trauma, but the dignity with which it holds space for it. The work does not sensationalize. It does not offer easy consolation. It invites us simply to bear witness—to remain present, to listen.
In the end, Hush-a-Bye is a lullaby not meant to lull us to sleep, but to awaken us. A song for the unheard. A prayer for those still carrying childhood pain beneath adult skin. A reminder that behind every silence, a heartbeat waits to be heard. And perhaps that is enough. To listen—and to respond.
