Els Dietvorst

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"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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VIDEO & FILM

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(c)Els Dietvorst Archief, scan: M HKA, 2019
The Black Lamb, 2011-2014
Els Dietvorst
Video
digital file (colour, sound)

The Black Lamb is an online film project started in 2011 by artist and filmmaker Els Dietvorst.

Els Dietvorst watches her neighbours in Duncormick (Ireland) struggling to make ends meet. This sketch of the daily fight for survival, far from the city, offers a unique perspective on the myth of idyllic living conditions in the countryside. The Black Lamb explores anti-utopian themes such as social conflict and survival on the margins. The web documentaries form the research part and the stories form the basis for The Rabbit and the Teasel.

The Black Lamb final unfolds over a three-year period with seasonal updates. In The Black Lamb, Dietvorst tracks the lives of four local characters focusing on their work and their relationships with their animals. She captures mementos from her own reality, a sheepfarm in Southeast Ireland, with fleeting glimpses into the worlds of local characters. She is drawn to unconventional individuals determined to live as far from the mainstream grid as possible. Dietvorst performs the dual role of sheepfarmer-come-artist-documentarian in this film.

www.theblacklamb.org

 

 

 ‘One of the more subtle, but profound, offerings of this edition(Burning Ice) is The Black Lamb, a project by documentary filmmaker and artist Els Dietvorst. Her work is sometimes compared to Joseph Beuys and his social democracy concept. Dietvorst recently moved from Brussels to a sheep farm in Duncormick, Ireland from where she watches her neighbours struggling to make ends meet. This sketch of the daily fight for survival, far away from the city, offers a wholly different perspective of the idyllic human condition in the countryside.’  (Peeters, 2013)

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