The work of Belgian artist Edith Dekyndt has a strong material character. Despite their sometimes dematerialised and abstract appearance, taking the form of video recordings, slide projections or minimalist installations, her works always question the relationship of humans with their material environment. Throughout her artistic practice Dekyndt weaves links between history and contemporary creation.
Her video piece ‘Ombre Indigène’ (Native Shadow), from 2014, went viral on social media eight years later, accompanied by the claim that its subject had been hoisted by Iranian women as a symbol of the anti-Hijab protests of September 2022.
A flag made of black hair flutters lightly in the breeze above the rocky shores of Diamant, on the island of Martinique. Planted by Dekyndt on the very spot where, in 1830, a smuggling boat involved in clandestine slave trade was met with complete destruction, foundering on the rocks with its hundred African captives. The shot, taken close to the resting place of Martinique philosopher Edouard Glissant, pays tribute to the creator of the concepts of ‘whole-world’ and ‘creolization’.
