The inaugural exhibit at the new Bebu Gallery is Between Seeing and Saying, an exhibit of photography by Dissoni, and photography/text by bee (Filipa Emor). These two artists explore the luminous space between perception and expression — that fragile tension where emotion becomes form, and form becomes language. Though their works emerge from the virtual landscape of Second Life, both move far beyond its boundaries, using that digital world as a site of deep introspection and shared humanity.
Dissoni, both artist and subject, has lived in Second Life for almost fifteen years. “A close friend brought me here,” she recalls, “and I haven’t left since.” Like many of us, her continued presence stems not from novelty, but from connection. “The community keeps me here. Even when the bonds were temporary, they felt like a second home. It’s not just a virtual world — it’s a shared experience.”
Her black-and-white photographs anchor the exhibit. Each composition contains a point of stillness: a piece of jewelry catching light, a finger tracing skin, a shadow folding into another. Through these, Dissoni transforms emotion — strength, fragility, longing, vulnerability — into something tangible. “It’s difficult to express these feelings with words,” she explains, “so I use her — my avatar — to explore intimate, quiet, or powerful moments.”
Fellow artist bee (Filipa Emor) enters the exhibition with a similar interest in thresholds — especially the one between text and image. To her, they are inseparable. “People say an image is worth a thousand words. I would say that an image with a thousand words is worth even more. They meet, resist each other, and meaning happens in that tension.”
Their art invites viewers into spaces of vulnerability and resistance — not as spectacle, but as shared interiority.
bee’s photographs and text pieces move in dialogue — not as explanation and illustration, but as partners in inquiry. “Neither the image leads the text, nor the text the image,” she says. “What matters is the space they open together — a space where meaning is not fixed, but negotiated.”
In his essay The Creative Process, James Baldwin wrote that “the artist’s struggle for integrity must be considered as a kind of metaphor for the struggle which is universal and daily.” Both Dissoni and bee embody this conviction. Their art invites viewers into spaces of vulnerability and resistance — not as spectacle, but as shared interiority. Like Baldwin’s artist, they act as witnesses to emotion’s inner architecture, mapping what we often cannot articulate.
bee sees Second Life not as an escape but as a continuation of creative practice: “It’s one of the few places where art, music, and community still intersect naturally.” She writes, photographs, and even DJs live sets, exploring atmosphere as a sensory, relational exchange. “These practices feed each other,” she says. “Creativity isn’t separated into categories — it’s lived, shared, and played with.”
“Creativity isn’t separated into categories — it’s lived, shared, and played with.”
Both artists blur the lines between the digital and the real, between invention and confession. As Anaïs Nin once observed, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” In Between Seeing and Saying, Dissoni and bee invite us to feel that doubling — to dwell in images that seem both ephemeral, yet pulsing with something unmistakably human.
Their exhibition is not about answers, but encounters: between light and silence, solitude and connection, avatar and self. It reminds us, in Baldwin’s words, that “the purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers.”
Gallery View
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[Finally, there is much to be said about finding a community of creative folks who are generous of spirit and easy to collaborate with – in ways big and small. I have another set of musings about that (half finished) waiting for me to have the time to complete it. But more immediately, I want to acknowledge and thank the folks involved in this particular project.
Bebu – the club and gallery – has been a long-time focus of my time on Second Life. It has gone through many builds and locations – as things tend to do there. But the most recent iterations have had me reflecting on the friendships and kindnesses that I have so often been the recipient of. An extended illness had me thinking I had left SL behind, and the many years of Sunday Sessions and exhibits in the gallery were only memories. But I found myself able to come back – and Goodes Bade, bee, and Luigy Balhaus offered me a place at BAULK – a wildly innovative and very cool collections of clubs and shops and adventures.
And Konrad Rune (long time friend of Nathimmel fame) listened to stories about the Aquarium on Belle Isle in Detroit – where I used to go to draw as a young art student skipping class. Based on those stories and his own twist, he built a new Bebu. And when Bebu moved from BAULK to PORTAL, he built a new – even better – version. When a friend is also a collaborator and generous with their skills and time, it turns every project into something more meaningful.]
Join us at the opening of BETWEEN SEEING AND SAYING on Sunday, 15th of February from 9 – 11am slt. Music by Xoch. Wander about, enjoy the art and the music.
Bebu Club & Gallery
smallthingsworthseeing 