Participating Artists: 

Alessandra Allioli
Rosalie Becher
Romeo Dini
Dora Frey
L. Camus Govoroff
Nicolas Lallemand
Mahaut Rey
Hadrien Zwape Moret

A Cruel Epilogue
Ana Bujošević



These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness.



A Cruel Epilogue at Volonté 93 delves into the concept of perpetual longing—our endless reach for something that may never have been attainable in the first place. This is about yearning for a golden period of innocence, purity, or joy that feels forever just out of reach. The exhibition captures the tension between innocence and the inevitable realization that life, like time, is indifferent to our desires, leaving us in a cruel cycle of craving what we cannot have.

Summer serves as a metaphor here. It represents not only a season of warmth and freedom but also a state of being—one associated with youth, carefreeness, and a kind of untarnished joy. Yet, as we grow, the summer we long for becomes more abstract, a fleeting idea that slips through our fingers. A Cruel Epilogue is a reflection on this endless pursuit—whether it be for happiness, fulfillment, or the recapturing of an idealized moment from our past. It asks what happens when we recognize that we’ve been chasing illusions, shadows of experiences that can never return.

This idea echoes Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of eternal recurrence—the idea that we are doomed to repeat the same desires, the same patterns, over and over. In this context, we find ourselves trapped in a cycle of reaching for something that is always just out of our grasp. Summer, in this sense, is not just a memory or a season; it is the symbolic embodiment of a longing that defines the human condition. We seek warmth and light, but by the time we recognize what we long for, the moment has passed, and we are left only with the echo of our desire.

The cruelty lies in this perpetual cycle of wanting, in our very nature that drives us to constantly pursue the unattainable. Byung-Chul Han's reflections on the burnout society align with this idea, suggesting that in our contemporary world, we are conditioned to constantly desire more, to never be satisfied. The pursuit of success, happiness, or contentment becomes an endless task, much like the chase for an eternal summer. We are left not only unfulfilled but also exhausted by the sheer weight of this longing.

At the heart of this exhibition is a meditation on innocence—the summer we once had, or think we had, before we were fully aware of the complexity of the world around us. As children, the summers seemed endless, filled with possibility and light. But as we grow older, we come to realize the finite nature of time, and the once-welcoming warmth of summer turns into a harsh reminder of what we’ve lost.

In this way, A Cruel Epilogue also invokes Roland Barthes' notion of “the grain of the voice”, that texture of something both familiar and unreachable. The warmth and light we seek, much like Barthes’ elusive grain, become fragmented memories—something we can almost touch, but not quite. Our desire to return to that warmth becomes a cruel game of proximity and distance. The closer we think we are to recapturing it, the further away it feels.

In the works presented, the artists explore these ideas of endless yearning and unattainable desire. The haze of memory, the ambiguity of what once was, and the persistent ache for something more are all central to the visual and conceptual language of the exhibition. Through various mediums, the artists reflect on the idea of innocence, the cruel passage of time, and the human tendency to romanticize the past, despite its imperfections.

A Cruel Epilogue is ultimately a philosophical exploration of longing—the universal human condition of reaching for that which eludes us. In this capitalist society, where desires are commodified and we are conditioned to always want more, the exhibition highlights the tension between our innate longing and the indifferent passage of time. We chase summer, but we are left in winter, where the cold clarity of reality settles in. The cruelty is not just in the loss, but in the endlessness of the pursuit.



There was a time, they said,
when the sun kissed our skin
without burning,

Now, we are left in the haze,
a bitter longing for what never was.

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