A fire glows behind the glass of TICK TACK in Antwerp, poised between comfort and destruction. It feels like a signal between welcoming yet alarming, stopping passersby in their tracks. From the darkness, a backwards sign reads The End, marking the threshold of Wish You Were Here, the recent exhibition by Banks Violette, curated by Maria Abramenko. On the eve of the opening, amid final checks and quiet tension, we spoke with Violette about grief, sound, and the collapse of America.
It has been a few years since, like in Homer’s Odyssey, you left the adventurous New York only to return to Ithaca, metaphorically and literally your hometown. Has the making of this show made you feel as though you were coming back home, to something familiar and deeply cherished?
Maybe not cherished, but familiar. Ithaca feels like a kind of non-space. Unlike New York City, it lacks a recognisable identity and is defined by absence. That absence gathers meaning, projections, and interpretations. The show is about that process, how meaning forms around absence.
Producing art from the margins undeniably marks a punk approach. Can one be subversive without making noise, and create chaos while remaining immersed in stillness?
Yes, absolutely. It comes from where I am from. Growing up in the middle of nowhere, there was no built-in audience. You had to create not just the work, but the conditions for its reception. That shaped how I understand subcultures and making work. Everything had to be built from the ground up. Returning to a place like that, where I have a history of creating audiences and events from nothing, feels more intuitive than New York ever did.
Is this absence of an audience and consequent lack of immediate feedback that feels freeing for you?
No, it is not. When those moments do happen, when someone truly relates to what you are doing, you value them far more. In places like New York, Antwerp, or any large city, people are conditioned to recognise certain things as important. There is already a structure telling you that this matters. But when that response comes from a place without a built-in system for circulating ideas, and people still respond, you know it is genuine. You know it is really connecting. There is something fragile and beautiful in that rarity. I treasured it then, and I still do now.