"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 !

TEKENINGEN [DRAWINGS]

Els Dietvorst's drawings are a way of communicating the continuous flow of her impressions. She not only records daily reality, but also thoughts and dreams, which she merges into one drawing, in so doing creating connections between reality and fiction. Dietvorst describes her drawings as an intuitive process in which she tries to correct one misstep with another. For her drawings, the artist always uses a mixture of white, black and red ink, resulting in warm shades of brown. The compositions, often with human figures or animals in the lead, usually have a surrealistic streak. By omitting personal characteristics, Dietvorst creates universal characters who embrace the absurdity of existence and celebrate life, with death as its perspective.