CONTEXT Cloths and rags can be used to clean up filth and dirt. These porcelain sculptures are overgrown with fungus and are scattered throughout the Abbey Keizersberg in Leuven. Disgusting at first sight, but yet so caring in its meaning: tending to each other's wounds is what expresses our connection to the beings that surround us and cloth is used to do so. Besides, fungus is so crucial to the world's ecosystem that is as life giving as it can be detrimental. These sculptures challenge our idea of care and disgust for the environment around us and show us how these two often intertwine. "Soft surgeons make smelling wounds" as the proverb so adequately states.
LINK WITH PRACTICE I bear a profound fascination for fungus: essential for survival as it can be life threatening. Fungus is omnipresent, highly adaptive to its environment and at the same time transforms its surroundings. Fungus is the perfect metaphor for coping and transition in suffering, as it is a metaphor for the manipulation of reality by the artist and the connection we experience with other organisms around us.
