The artist Iga Vandenhove invites you to observe an environment, until the rhythm breathes through you. The exhibition takes place in the Salle rouge of the Coopérative de solidarité Paradis.
Iga Vandenhove presents Mécanique ondulatoire, an immersive installation that explores sentient relations between the human body and the environment they’re observing. Through chronophotography, the artwork puts in parallel the movements of the scientists during their sampling process of the terrain and the ondulations of the sea ice they are studying. She suggests that a prolonged observation of an environment ends up imbuing the rhythm of its movement, the body of the person studying it. Made out of thousands of laser cut stencil painted silhouettes on geo-textile, the installation transforms an abstract pattern into a multitude of human apparitions. The bodies morph themselves in a collective movement that both evokes the sedimentation of scientific knowledge and the dynamics of the living. The material, associated with the covering of glaciers, also recalls the human imprint on fragile environments.
The light and sound plays a central role in the experience. Lightened up from the back, the fabric reveals a texture evoking sea ice, as a sound system plays recordings from an hydrophone, transporting the public beyond the exhibition, in the heart of a moving and organic, under-ice landscape.
With Mécanique ondulatoire, Iga Vandenhove suggests a poetic reflection on our way of living through, listening and understanding the environments around us, reminding us that human beings stay profoundly linked to the rhythms of the living.
