JOT FAU
THE LONER, 2015

 

This project was elaborated during a 9-month residency at la Fondation Carrefour des Arts in Brussels (2014-2015) . Questioning the idea of the habitat, the concept of the home. Of the body in its intimate sphere. Considering ones living area as an extension of ones corpus. The studio in which I was working during this 9-month residency became not only a place of intense work and concentration but also a place of retreat. The project is about this solitude and about the personal rituals that one elaborates naturally, hereby finding interest in the objects that one surrounds oneself with. As part of the project I selected objects that were once part of my daily life, and that -for some reason- lost their functionalities. I chose to isolate all these objects by covering them entirely with leather. This action is simultaneously saving the objects from some kind of oblivion and giving them a new context of being. The objects which are from now on limited to their shape alone, are to be seen as residuals of a period of life. With the same intensions in mind I started dying and varnishing natural and found materials such as wood, soil, parts of furniture and dead plants I found in the streets of Brussels. The varnish is charged with the same function as the leather, keeping the material from evolving further, keeping it from falling in oblivion, keeping it from dying eventually. Capturing the object at one exact point of its evolution.
At the end of the residency the work was deliberately shown in the studio, as most of the pieces were created in regard to the space itself. In this very personal working space in which I instinctively created multiple rituals myself, and which I considered to be a home for the period of the residency. The objects and the sculptures present in the show are clearly mirroring a presence. The human body, its shape and its needs. Anita is the title of the video that is part of the project. A woman is filmed in this exact same, but emptied studio space. The video is a series of actions interpreted by her, with a voice over of poems written in this same period. The emptiness of the space is underlining notions like solitude, expectancy and hope.
Installation view, Bed, lamp and teepot, 2016 - Wood, teepot, two cups and lamp covered with leather, several pieces of fabric.
Bed, 2016 - Tiny bed made from raw clay and covered with leather, left on a small pile of soil
Armour, 2016 - Found burned treetrunk, handsawn into the shape of a childrens armour, drawing made from the ashes of that same treetrunk
Colonne, 2016 - drawings (pencil on paper) varnished onto woodpanels.
Collection of broken objects covered with leather, 2016; one broken teapot, a lost feather, a pair of shoes, one piece of a broken stool, a broken tree branch and one sock
Sink, 2016; Installation - wood, ceramic pots, varnished box with varnished brushes, rope, textile, varnished root of a dead and found plant
Table, 2016 - installation made from a piece of a wooden table, a with leather covered lonesome sock, a with leather covered broken piece of tree, a ceramics pot filled with water, a handsawn fake leather image of a dress.
The loner's cap, 2016 - leather, bamboo
Roots, 2016 - Day after day varnished plants that were found dead and abandonned in the street
Roof and stool, 2016 - bamboo, handmade leather piece of garment, rope, broken stool covered with rope, hand woven scarf made from rope, handsawn leather mittens, fabric
Fusion was an intense necessity, separation even more, 2016 - dress, embroidered leather label
Collection of broken objects covered with leather, 2016; one sock, childhood watch, teapot, pair of shoes, key of my parents house, lost feather, broken tree branch, two cups
Click on the image to view excerpts of ANITA, 2015, 8'41" password; the loner
Image Stills of the video Anita, 2015, 8'41"