Els Dietvorst

"I am going to take you on a tour through my work. It will be a story tour because stories are what link us as humans. Stories make us exist, make us connect through time and space."

Els Dietvorst (°1964) is a socially engaged artist. She uses dialogue, experiment and intuition as her main artistic strategies. Ever since the 1990s, she has been moved by social issues such as migration, racism and climate change. Dietvorst reflects on the human condition. As a result, major themes such as life and death, anxiety, alienation and desire are addressed in her work. She focuses particularly on the position of the outsider, pointing her gaze to/aiming her attention at those people and events that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Her choice of medium, whether it be actions, documentaries, films, mud sculptures, installations, drawings or theater texts, depends on the specific circumstances and the individual nature of each project. Many of her artworks have therefore been given away or destroyed, or have perished.

In 2020, many of these works were remade again for the exhibition *Dooltocht/A desperate quest to find a base for hope at M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp). She is currently researcher on a PhD: "Partisans of the Real" at the Royal Academy / University of Antwerp.

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Dirk Braeckman

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B.C.-B.X.-01, 2001-2001

Dirk Braeckman

Photography , 120 x 180 cm

silver gelatine print, aluminium

Dirk Braeckman’s photographs capture the essence of an experience, a space and the everyday reality. These photos are part of a series of four large-format black-and-white photos, mounted on metal. They are fragments, isolated in time and space, with no trace of human presence.

The artist does not accentuate any elements of the image, but treats them all as equal. The images are frontal shots that claim their place in the room and obstruct any view of an underlying world. The recurrent dark and drab tones create a mysterious effect, and the grainy surface texture (caused by the enlargement from a small negative) makes the overall image blurred.

Braeckman’s titles do not give us any point of reference. They are a personal code that refers to the place where the picture was taken, with whom and the year. Braeckman hopes that the code allows you to reenter his work each time you look at it.

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