Bird (work in progress)

I was fascinated by feathers in the landscape because I wondered what happens to them if no one picks them up. My fascination with abandoned objects in the urban landscape led me to stray umbrellas. I began to collect them. Stray umbrellas, listening to the wind instead of to humans.

I brought the feathers together with those stray umbrellas. I reconstructed the stray umbrella by placing peacock feathers instead of the missing ribs. That way, they became one again. Peacock feathers were associated in my mind with my grandfather who passed away this year. I told him before he died that I was working on this. He said I always wanted to have those feathers. Maybe it was because of those eyes. I had always been interested in seeing better. For the project, I didn’t want to use the eyes of the feathers, so I cut them off and gave them as gifts to beautiful people here and there.

The movement of opening and closing an umbrella is just like a bird opening and closing its wings. From this idea that blown away umbrellas are actually birds, I began creating a universe consisting of feathers and blown away umbrellas.

This umbrella is suspended by hanging the handle over a steel cable. Sometimes, the feathers move due to movement on the wire, making it seem like a living organism.

The suggestion to reuse and transform blown-away umbrellas into new objects fits within this broader framework. The idea of umbrellas being catched and transformed by nature raises questions about sustainability and the relationship between human creations and the natural environment. Umbrellas, originally intended to protect us from these elements, are reinterpreted as part of a larger ecological narrative.

The concept of stray umbrellas speaks to the power of nature and the ability of objects to be transformed by their surroundings. It challenges us to consider our relationship with materials and our impact on the environment.

This transformation from functional object to lost object raises questions about the finiteness of human creations and the transience of our existence. By connecting the umbrellas with feathers, symbols of lightness and freedom, a story is also told about flying after death, making the artwork a meditation on impermanence, transcendence, and the cycle of life and death.

The unwanted video series (2024)

“The Unwanted video series” is a video series that utilizes accidentally taken photos and sounds from 65 individuals who responded to an open call via social media. These spontaneous snapshots provide an authentic and unfiltered glimpse into the behind-the-scenes of these individuals’ lives.

The series combines all these raw images with pocket calls, resulting in a seamless fusion of visuals and audio. Through this combination, the lives of 65 individuals are brought together in three stories. The sound appears to emanate from the visuals we see, and vice versa, creating a surreal experience.

“The unwanted video series“ prompts viewers to reflect on common experiences and points of connection in our contemporary society, all while exploring themes of identity, privacy, and the intricacies of human relationships. In doing so, the series serves as a poignant reflection on the blurred boundaries between reality and fiction, compelling viewers to reconsider their perceptions of truth and storytelling in the digital age.

MOVING ON (2024)

A DIY video series consisting of 8 short movies emerges from the wreckage after the end of a long-term romantic relationship. Justine navigates through the dating scene for two years post-breakup, relying on intuition as her compass, with an iPhone and shaky hand camera as her witnesses.

In chance encounters with various men, she discovers new ways to redefine her limitations and documents these experiences. Each video is titled with an incompetence that is redefined in the film, transforming them into competencies. Dates and encounters serve as her sources of inspiration, collectively creating a new world in which limitations are played with.

“MOVING IN” is an exhibition of the videos shown in space where Justine creates a scenography by using the furniture she has no space for after the breakup.

Imagine yourself amidst Justine’s furniture—a – round bed where you lie while watching videos, a big collection of statues of dogs and other memorable pieces that offer a glimpse into who she is.

The longer the exhibitions run, the less rent she has to pay for a storage unit for her furniture, fixing a financial and practical issue through this expo.

Painted by the cough (2024)

Saliva with coughing techniques

4 x (25 x 30) cm 

1 x (55 x 73) cm

*video making process available on request

*This work was shown as a performance in an old swing club ‘Hectolitre’. In this performance I had a first date with a person. As a date we did the performance where we made a cough painting together with saliva and coughing on paint. Then the performance had to be continued by the audience so the shower became more and more full of cough paintings.

KISSES WITH LIPSTICK (2023)

V1: Kisses with lipstick of vagina & mouth, mixed

V2: Kisses with lipstick of vagina

*

*Exhibition: Road to nowhere (Ghent)
The works were shown along with a video showing the process of making the works. You could not enter the space itself and had to look through a mailbox slot to see inside. Also shown in Mercerie in the restroom.

The license plate tales (2022-…)

The license plate tales is a concept where I take pictures of license plates. They are license plates that form words. They are plates that coincidentally form words. They are not personalized plates and the numbers around the words are erased for privacy reasons. The more license photos you collect, the more or bigger sentences you can make with the different plates, love letters or even books.

-ZOO
Pictures of found animals suspended by nylon wire in an open cage

-THE KEYS TO ALL YOUR PROBLEMS
Hung in frame: 2 pictures of KEY and CLE plus a real key

-GOING NUTS
2 autonomous works originally unrelated and made separately brought together : a real NUT, a canvas with NUT painted on it with walnut ink, a photograph with license plate NUT

-THE BODY OF YOUR DREAMS
Hanging on a velcro surface. People can add body parts, the people can hang it and make their own body. They can also add additional elements for example the word ABS.

-ART AND ALMOST ART
ART gets an old-fashioned expensive frame around it, Almost art gets no frame

-OPPOSITES
Opposite words are brought together

-HOMOPHONES
The same sounding words are brought together

The lost sail (2022)

The Lost Sail is dealing around the incompetence to show something based on a conversation I had with Zao Wang, a director born in China. Because of the censorship in China he was not able to tell the story he wanted with a particular film. The Lost Sail tells what should have been seen while showing a black image. This video is intended for a cinemascreen.

This video is part of a series of videos I made in which I explore the incompetences I experience to express myself after breaking up a relationship. The first video deals with the incompetence to show. In the second I search for a way to represent the inability to feel. The third video is about the incompetence to speak, find words. The videos and the mediums that were chosen in it each contribute to the process of incompetence. A cinema screen, an theremin, a drawing session, …  As the immaterial incompetences solidifies, it does so in the form of a medium. This way I look for ways where the medium can contribute to the process of research, invisibility and gelation. Though this process of  materialisations, the media itself is also up for investigation and transformation. 

*Screenings: Leuven kortfilmfestival, Shortfilm festival Oberhausen, Kassel docfest. Distributed by ARGOS

Portrait of humanity (2020)

Portrait of humanity is a of catalog of man-made objects that are currently in space. The objects on it variate from bags of shit to an advertisement for Doritos.

The work was set up as a sound installation. The visitor had to take a seat at the typewriter and use headphones to communicate with someone in space. The person at the typewriter has to materialize the catalog by typing out what the woman says through the headphones.

MODERN TIME TRAVEL IN THE MINDSCAPE (2021)

A diptych of videos that are an attempt to manage and control time by using Google Streetview.

Pt. 1, 9′ Constructs a childish memory of the bicycle trips to school. This is done by taking the same route again with Google Street view in the landscape of the past. The ride to school is an almost psychoanalytical journey in which the thoughts of the creator switch between past present and future. And this entirely without the use of tele-time machinery of wacky professors. The video explores how memories and present are dominated by history, digital life and the society we live in.

Pt. 2, 13′ In this video, the creator tries to free herself from the time pressure she experiences by going on an imaginary plane trip through different time zones.

*Screened at Art Cinema OFFoff (Ghent) *Exhibition: STIMULANS (Kortrijk, curated by Bepart), Broadcasted on EclipsTV

*Available on demand

Over The Top (2020)

Documentary 26′

How can you find and deserve your place in the world’s history, without killing people or even worse, going into politics? Maybe by putting an artwork on top of the Giza Pyramid? Over the top is a fast food style documentary about the hunt of a young person to find meaning and fulfillment in modern life.

Teaser: https://vimeo.com/519030479
Poster: https://vimeo.com/523240532
Instagram filter: https://vimeo.com/442272943/1b23cf5048

*Received financial support from the city of Roeselare together with the title of cultural ambassador for Roeselare 2018-2020
*Received financial support for post production from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF).

*Festival selections: FIFA Montreal presented in the collection ‘something new’, Brussels art film festival, International shortfilm festival Leuven, Filmfestival Oostende *Special screenings: Breedbeeld kortfilmfestival guest program curated by Fantômas (De studio Antwerp), Selection of foreign films out of recent editions of FIFA (Palazzo Grassi Venice)

*Updates: https://www.instagram.com/overthetop_movie/

Sensitive (2020)

Sensitive is a blanket with a print of one of my bruises. It materializes my fragility and the things I’d rather keep hidden under a cover. It’s my intention that the abstract term ‘vulnerability’ becomes tangible.

You can touch the blanket and feel it.
Do you want to feel it? Or does it evoke resistance? 
Do you dare to feel fragility or do you want to appear strong? 
Is it uncomfortable to touch my fragility? 

In this way I want to think about the awkwardness around vulnerability that exists in this society.

3 versions: dog attack, bicycle accident, wrong encounter

*Exhibition: Decoratelier curated by ARGOS. , BRUOCSELLA by K.L.8 (Brussels) , De ambassadeurs (Roeselare)

Silhouette (work in progress)

Documentary 52′

Temporary pitch:

What does the world look like through the eyes of technology? In modern times, technology is less and less visible. Domotics, bluetooth, wifi, behind- the-scenes robots, data analytics, artificial intelligence. Silhouette is a visual dance in search of the infrastructures behind the ubiquitous invisible technology. What would what we accept look like if we could see it all? What shape would it have what colors, what silhouettes, what sounds? Silhouette sets out to depict the invisible impact of technology, unraveling how we allow something to become part of our landscape.

*Teaser: https://vimeo.com/493664318

*Received financial support for scenario and for development from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF).

Modern cave paintings (2020)

For this I used authentic cave paintings. Some assume that the reason for depicting the animals was fear of them. To allay this fear, a drawer of the tribe was asked to draw the animal on a rock with charcoal or dyes. In these times the exorcism of the terrifying and surrounding animals found form on these walls. During the corona lockdown I reminded myself that just like back then we have to sit at home in our corona cave with the fear of the corona animal outside our safe place. That’s why I started working with those old cave paintings to make a modern translation of them. It represents my fear in the covid era. The fear for the Corona bacteria outside my quarantine cave.

*Published in Subbacultcha magazine

Dear family (2020)

Dear Family’ is a video made on the occasion of the theatre performance Family. It’s a short video that addresses the shamed attitude towards family problems by using the family portrait as the central theme. How a family wants to look like and what should such a family portrait reflect, or just hide to the outside world?

*This film is a collaboration between VRT, Klara, NTGent and Sabam. Dear Family’ is the second episode in a mini-series around three city theatres. Through a short film, a young starting film duo opens up the central theme of a theatre performance to a wider audience

Make over (2021)

Every night I clean my face with a make-up remover wipe. The wipe is then smeared with colors by my daily layer of makeup. It uncovers the mask I use to get out of the house. Not a single day goes by and the wipe stays white. A year – 366 days because this year is a leap year – I saved up the wipes. The wipes confronted me with the absurdity of the ideal of beauty. All what rests of the imitated beauty are dark spots that sometimes even look like shit.

*The make up wipes get their expression in the shape of curtains. This way the construction wants to play with the different layers just like you apply make-up in different layers.

*Exhibition: De ambassadeurs (Roeselare)

 

Seeing the sea (2020)

During the Corona crisis, I am again intensely confronted with the greatness of the overwhelming nature and how powerful it is to kill so many people.

*

All coastal municipalities have called for no more going to sea.

No dike walks, no fresh sea air, no crazy seagulls. No splashing waves. No low tide and flood that carry your thoughts, no escapism. 

*

The romantic painter looked at the natural landscape and painted it.
During quarantine I can’t go outside. 
The only way to see the landscape is by using google streetview. 
 
Digital art filters were put on screenshots of google streetview.
 

*Exhibitions: selected by untitled_mu.zee for their online exhibition space during the quarantine period due to the corona virus (Oostende), K.L.8 (Brussels)

The works were presented as projections on an empty canvas. Thus the work makes it possible, in coronation times, to lean as closely as possible to the romantic painter and the canvas. In this way, the work reflects on these values and movements within it.

Setup projected onto a blank canvas;

I love Icarus

I love Icarus Visual translation of a poem by Tjitske Jansen. The visualisation of the desire for freedom shown as a drone image that depicts the point of view of Icarus flying to the sun while knowing that his wings will melt. With a naked woman as the embodiment of Icarus who literally grabs the drone shot with her hands, a symbol of grasping her freedom.

* Financial support and training from the international video poetry project of the Flemish-Dutch cultural institution Ons Erfdeel vzw and Poëziecentrum Gent.
*Festival selections: WoordZee (Oostende)
*Small interview: https://www.focus-wtv.be/nieuws/bewogen-verzen-op-woordzee-oostende?fbclid=IwAR1ll7ggc7IrCH9P_hrmLR-xbJGC_-eKtH6nUSjwWR8NgiqyxhXC1oBUDZE

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Maregrave (2017)

Documentary 25′

An impressionist portrait of a threatening North Sea, depicted as a collection of -perpetually growing- human decay.

The coastline forms the border between water and land. This line is constantly moving. The sea takes along everything that comes on its path, slowly changing into a graveyard of sunken souls and a collection of human objects. Future generations will not be spared: several experts predict the rise of the sea level. More and more human territory is threatened to become part of the sea’s increasing collection. This impressionistic documentary investigates signs of past human decay in order to understand the potential threat of a rising sea.

Trailer:

We made also a version where we projected the original movie on a water surface and refilmed it;

Schermafbeelding 2019-05-30 om 17.38.09Schermafbeelding 2019-05-30 om 17.38.18Schermafbeelding 2019-05-30 om 17.38.34

An edition in which the film was projected live on water;

*Festival selections: IDFA, International shortfilm festival Leuven, Filmfestival Oostende, Visite Film Festival Antwerpen, Festival International du film eau et climat Louvain-La-Neuve, FINCA – International Environmental Film Festival Buenos Aires, Festival International du Documentaire Émergent Paris, Brussels Short Film Festival, Tbilisi International Student Film Festival Georgia, Breedbeeld kortfilmfestival Antwerpen, Astra film festival Romania,

Awards: Grand Prix Tbilisi International Student Film Festival, Ensor best cinematography in a shortfilm

Cinema screenings, Docpoppies: Sphinx Cinema Gent, Cinema Lumière Brugge, Cinema Cartoon’s Antwerpen, The Roxy Theatre Koersel, Cultuurcentrum Zwaneberg Heist-op-den-Berg, Filmhuis Klappei Antwerpen

Exhibition: Time can tell (Roeselare, Curators: Rolf Quaghebeur & Christa Vyvey), School Is Out For Summer (Brussels, Centre for Art and Media), ForadCamp (Barcelona, Association of Independent Documentary Filmmakers INDOC), Mu.ZEE (Oostende)