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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VIDEO & FILM

Life is art. Art is life.

My work is driven by a continuous quest. A search for beauty, a collective subconscious and the 'missing link' between art and society. I truly believe in the link between art and society. This is not in the narrow institutional sense (poverty, exclusion, marginality), but in the broad sense, namely the social and work matter: life histories, interpersonal dialogue, migration and cultural differences, human dreams and desires, and the even wider human condition.

Art and life are integral or me. Deeper, I see art as a poetic and vital force that creates different dynamics, as a social process, a catalyst that links individuals from different backgrounds and origins. Instead of remaining isolated from difficult social conditions, but to deal directly with social contradictions, whether by physical implication, or through more community involvement.

Art is the energy of of human beings being in dialogue with one another. In the spirit of Beuys, the group happening – the collective, the heat and the warmth of the people together – is how art occurs, is the art process, is the art product in action.

On the other hand, art to me is a very individual, personal activity. An activity that gives me the chance to escape from this society or to create another, better one. This "artistic self" (or the artist-individual) is the basis, the foundation of my art. All projects originated and evolved from this artistic self. Besides, I have a strong interest in establishing a dialogue with others, to work collectively, precisely to challenge this "artistic self '', to see different perspectives and opinions and, also, to share.

On both counts, I work very intuitively. The final artwork is not the end product but the whole process is part of it. To be able to create these processes, these ‘passageways’. I take the time and space needed. (ED)