Two shiny laque sculptures that stand as guardians of a temple, an entrance gate to a world ruled by slobbery ticks, hunters of blood and human flesh.
The sculptures are the most recent part in a series of works where I examine the small insect: tick.
TICK body of work:
By using the tick as a metaphor of failed aspiration of living together on this planet,
the work around the tick draws attention to the ecological threats and related
environmental and political discussions of our current day and our future. It takes up
the controversy of treatment methods of Lyme disease which is often referred to as an
invisible disease. When conventional medication cannot provide treatment but yet
health insurances don’t cover treatments outside specific regulations, it immediately
becomes a political question of who can afford to be sick?It is a kind of systemic
discrimination. In this way I can relate this body of work with the work of my mother
and the disease of addiction, where cure can be expensive and carry a huge amount of
stigma. In the Tick body of work I play with a horror scenario, a complicated
dystopian horror story where enlarged mutated ticks are sent out by Mother Earth,
who is in such a deep trauma she decides to bring suffering to humans. As it happens
with many of my works, this escalated into a family drama: in Spring 2019 I wrote a
play commission by Antwerp art weekend called Failure is a feeling that exists long
before it comes It's a musical duet between ‘Mother Earth’ her son ‘The Tick’ played
by a contemporary dancer and opera singer. In the play The Tick feel objectified by
Mother Earth because she doesn’t give a shit about The Ticks’ emotions, she just
wants to use their muscular bodies and their capacity to injure humans.
In the tick body of work includes for example the outdoor sculpture The Tick
(2018/2019) commissioned for the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (Theodora
Niemeijer Prijs).