< Maarten Vanden Eynde
Belgian Art Prize 2017
Maarten Vanden Eynde
Mar 17, 2017 - May 28, 2017
Bozar, Brussels (Belgium)
Maarten Vanden Eynde’s artistic practice consists of sculpture, photography and installation, and is often context related. From the perspective of changes brought about by globalisation, Vanden Eynde asks questions about evolution: what is progress? Are we moving forward? Where to? And why did we start moving in the first place? His work is situated exactly on the borderline between the past and the future; sometimes looking forward to the future of yesterday, sometimes looking back to the history of tomorrow.

For the Belgian Art Prize Vanden Eynde has drawn a triangle between the trade in cotton and uranium, Belgium’s mercantile history and every human’s capacity to rewrite history. He shows three works that are part of Triangular Trade, a long-running research project. Ils ont partagé le monde is a series of nine paintings he did together with the Congolese painter Musasa showing the most important raw materials that provide the foundations of the world that we know. The Gadget, a 3D version in bobbin lace of the very first atom bomb, hints to the significant link between cotton and uranium. The installation Around the World, a bobbin in the form of a rocket, symbolises the important role that cotton plays on a global scale.

Images by Philippe De Gobert