Els Dietvorst

NLEN

"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 !

VIDEO & FILM

Back
(c)Els Dietvorst Archief, scan: M HKA, 2019
A Walk with ACM, 2009
Els Dietvorst
Video , 00:15:00
digital file

Years after she had lost track of him, Els Dietvorst tracks ACM down again. Together they walk to the places he stayed and where he was chased away. The film starts with a quote by Walter Benjamin, stayed extended metaphor for the poetic method, as Baudelaire practised it. ‘Ragpicker' and poet: both are concerned with refuse’.

ACM is a ragpicker, a poet, a walker, philosopher, architect, sculptor, scavenger. He consumed whatever we throw away. ACM stands for Art-Coeur-Merci. Art-Heart-Thank you. ACM was born in Cameroon and ended up in Belgium for several reasons. The moment I met him, he lived, in an abandoned industrial housingstate near the canal Brussel-Charleroi, on the edge of the city. The moment I wanted to make a film about him, he disappeared. His shed was burned down and I had recuperated works, drawings and belongings. The film 'As long as the blackbird sings'  is a film based of what I could experience of ACM's life, mixed with experiences and stories out of Walden (Henry David Thoreau). I followed him through all this different periods of his life and portretted him in 3 different films. Never did I experience art, living and surviving so closely entwined. This shared experience is turned into the monologue 'I'M GOING TO SEE MY CHICKENS'. The monologue will be performed in May 2008 by the famous Belgian actor Dirk Roofthooft.

Back