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Bait And Lure

2022

4K video, 16:9, 9:23

Quadraphonic sound design by Siebe Thijs

Meise Botanic Garden

The development of greenhouses and orangeries in Europe is closely linked to colonisation and the great expeditions of the 18th century, during which exotic specimens were brought back to enrich the collections of botanical gardens. The botanical greenhouse, like the museum, is a place where "objects" from outside are kept and classified. However, unlike museums, greenhouses contain "living objects", inside plants must grow and so the break with the outside world is a partial break. The glass architecture separates from the climate but allows the sun's rays to pass through, the greenhouse tends to create an outside within the inside, an illusion of nature in a cultural place.

The greenhouses of the botanical garden in Meise are the largest in Belgium and contain almost 10,000 species of plants. The park's website states that visitors can discover « the tropical forest, the savannah and the desert ». If botanical greenhouses are a kind of museum of exotic plants, here certain scenographic choices should be noted: the use of loudspeakers broadcasting animal noises, fake rocks, fake baobab trunks and fake huts decorate the path, artificial waterways that the visitor crosses on wooden logs, or the excessive diffusion of water vapour creating real atmospheric fog. More than a simple visit, it is a real adventure for the visitor, an expedition into an artificial world, a cleverly orchestrated illusion on a semblance of nature.

Bait And Lure

2022

Transparent screen on aluminium frame and rear projection, in the background: cut in the fake wall to create a view on the hidden windows, video Neon presented on iPad 

Installation for the exhibition A Glittering Ruin Sucked Upwards

Gosset Site, Brussels

I was growing "weeds" in my studio, when one day I discovered that a butterfly had flown in, probably attracted by the lighting system or the plants growing underneath. It is a Day Peacock, one of the most common species in Belgium. I try in vain to get it to come out as it stubbornly bumps into the neon, hoping to escape into the light. Finally, I film it with my phone, which would become the Neon video. A few days later, I find the dead insect and decide to mount its body on a ring to take it for a walk in the greenhouses of Meise. The camera is fixed to my chest to film only my black-gloved hand, like that of a puppeteer, where the insect is waving at the tip of my index finger. The framing is reminiscent of an FPS (First Person Shooter) video game. In the editing, the bodies of the visitors are enclosed in blurred rectangles and the original sound is transformed by composer Siebe Thijs as we move through the greenhouse.

Detail of the installation

2022

Black paint and black carpet, cut in the fake wall, Neon video presented on iPad with headphones, electric installation of the exhibition space

Gosset Site, Brussels

Neon

2022

Full HD video, 16:9, 40 sec in loop

Parallel to the composition of gardens, botany developed in Europe as the science of studying plants. For this purpose, nominal, classificatory, pictorial and photographic methods were invented with varying degrees of success. Representation in particular has raised several questions. How can a constantly changing plant "object" be shown in a definitive way? How can we make an image of what in nature never adopts a precise form, each specimen being different from another? For the drawing, in order to be as objective as possible, it was decided to construct an archetype. The particularities, the defects, the individuality of a specimen are erased, to show only the significant elements that it shares with the others. In order to give an account of temporal evolution, each stage is separated and represented individually, the plant is divided into parts (leaf, stem, bud, flower, etc.), as in an anatomical dissection where each organ is cut out of the whole.

The Botanist's Dream

2022

Photo-montage used as wallpaper, variable size print

The Untitled Dissection series is inspired by 19th and 20th century botanical drawings and engravings and made with "weeds" that have grown in my studio. Each image consists of two photographs of the same plant, the body of which is uprooted and exposed in its entirety. However, the representation is broken up into a grid where the two images fit together like a puzzle. One is a cyanotype, the first photographic technique used in botany by Anna Atkins, the other is a digital photograph printed and transferred with a chemical. Both techniques share the idea of contact or imprint, in contrast, a black-gloved hand manipulates the plant in the digital image, a hand that refuses contact and does not wish to leave a trace.

The Botanist's Dream wallpaper was made from studio photographs of "weed" manipulation, the organisation of the images in a deceptively symmetrical composition is inspired by the drawings of German biologist Ernst Haeckel.

Untitled Dissection (Erigeron Canadensis)

2022

Pencil, cyanotype and laser print transfer on 150g Schoellershammer Duria paper, beech frame

7O,6 x 45,2 x 3,5 cm

Untitled Dissection (Lactuca Serriola)

2022

Pencil, cyanotype and laser print transfer on 150g Schoellershammer Duria paper, beech frame

7O,6 x 57 x 3,5 cm​

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