"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. 

Welcome !

SCULPTURES [SCULPTUREN]

UNDER CONSTRUCTION


DRIFTWOOD SCULPTURES

Els Dietvorst collects natural objects that wash up on the shore. She makes paintings of them, with bistre. She fashions driftwood into a tree, or works on it with a burner. The burnt lines on these wooden sculptures depict people or animals. Dietvorst collects, treats and admires what nature has to offer. Her rituals lend a new function to existing matter and cast it in a different light. Just as Dietvorst shows in her video work, that she respects people and invites them to look at her in a different way, so too, in her recent work, she shows appreciation for our environment. Nature is to be nurtured and respected. As human beings we are but part of a larger whole and everything is connected.

(source: April 2021, Indra Devriendt)


LOAM SCULPTURES [LEMEN BEELDEN]

Het werk van Els Dietvorst is op het eerste gezicht van een adembenemende diversiteit. Het gaat van installaties en lemen beelden over tekeningen in rode inkt tot theatermonologen en andere teksten, van houtsneden en grafiek in metalen kaders tot magazines en kunstenaarsboeken, van audiowerken, 16 mm-films, documentaires en diverse types videowerken tot tattoos en gemeenschapsvorming – wat Joseph Beuys ‘Sociale Plastik’ zou noemen en wat het cultuurbeleid in Vlaanderen de voorbije jaren bestempelde als ‘sociaal-artistiek werk.’