Vena/The Woods cry

October 2000

Installation: 5 outdoor constructions, 1 video/sound-installation indoors, temporarily installed at the Muncipal Academy of Fine Arts and its adjoining Beukenhof-park in Kontich.

The outdoor constructions were enlarged tree-leafs, made of canvas suspended over a central copper bar.
Inside the nearby Academy building, the same treeleaf structure formed the basis for another work: on a polystyrene surface an image of a man's back was video-projected. (see Vena).
In the video-projection a black line runs down, dividing itself into several branches and then sinking away into the back. Simultaniously the sound of breathing is audible from under the surface.

"'Vena' is Latin for 'vein'.The work wants to indicate that the sap that runs through a tree-leaf is also the blood that runs through our veins. It would be sensible not to consider this awareness as just another issue of some green political party, but rather as a notion that concerns us all, i.e. the notion that everything is related to everything."
(Toon Van Ishoven)

The installation was part of the project 'Art in the Woods' which wants to bring Flander's green area's under the attention. In the village of Kontich, in 6 green area's installations by 6 artists were presented (including: Berlinde De Bruyckere, Paul Van Boven, Lieve Peeters, Jonathan Jacquemyn, Joris Ghekiere).