Maarten Vanden Eynde

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 BelgianArtPrize 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.

 

For his installation in the BelgianArtPrize 2017, the artist received the generous support of :

Biography

Maarten Vanden Eynde (b. 1977, Leuven, BE) works in Brussels (BE) and Saint-Mihiel (FR). In recent years his works were included in the exhibitions ‘2050. A Brief History of the Future’ in Palazzo Reale, Milan (2016) and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels (2015), ‘Réalités Filantes, #4’ at the Lubumbashi Biennale (2015), ‘Beyond Earth Art’ at the Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca (2014), ‘Ja Natuurlijk’, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (2013), during ‘Manifesta9’ in Genk (2012), ‘The Museum of Forgotten History’ at M HKA, Antwerp (2012) and Dublin Contemporary (2011). In 2005 he founded the organisation  ‘Enough Room for Space’, a mobile platform for site-specific projects, together with Marjolijn Dijkman.

On May 24 a LUNÄ talk takes place in Bozar in the framework of the BelgianArtPrize about the influence of cotton production and trade on the creation of nation states and other global power structures.

www.maartenvandeneynde.com – www.enoughroomforspace.org

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