Brightly colored, glittering, geometric compositions float on a background of crisp white frames. The sleek shapes refer to their title: 'Il y a – sans contexte'; towards a radically abstract interpretation. They “are without context”. But are they as innocent as they look? The love for texture and special materials is a recurring theme throughout Borms' oeuvre. These antique cathedral glass samples once accompanied representatives of the Blue Ridge Glass Corporation on the road a century ago in a travelable, handmade wooden box. This perfectly represent Borms' visual language. She loves little treasures and the bigger story behind the curtain. The structure, colors and translucidity of these imprimé glasses play beautifully with the light. The history of the stained glass window is the history of divine light and the splendor of wealth. After falling out of fashion for a while, the stained glass window experienced a renewed, profane flourishing during the interwar period with the Art Nouveau and Art Déco styles and De Stijl and Bauhaus in close relationship with other decorative artistic elements. This material is certainly not innocent and carries many connotations. The sleek basic form, on which the artist never intervenes, of the glass samples harbors a complex, fluid dimension provided by the carefully folded architectural plans behind the glass with fine patterns, lines, arrows and markings. Can we be without context? Can we make autonomous choices independently of stories, education, culture? These works of art are as treacherous as their crystal-sharp edges and mercilessly confront us with the opposite. The fragile, almost lovely, sweetly colored, dreamy works of art carry the same monumental power as the sacred stained glass windows. However, it is not the divine light that brings us so inexorably into contact with our insignificance, but rather the reflection of our own patterns, beliefs and stories.
