Hedwig Brouckaert 


Bio :

A native of Ghent Belgium, Hedwig Brouckaert received her MFA from the University of California, Davis after completing a Masters in sculpture at the Sint-Lukas Hogeschool in Brussels and a Postgraduate at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Belgium. Brouckaert received numerous grants from the Flemish Government in Belgium, and fellowships of the Rockefeller Foundation – Bellagio (IT), Liguria Study Center Bogliasco (IT), Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, Hafnarborg Museum of Iceland, Yaddo (NY), Anderson Ranch (CO), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and FLACC (BE). Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions throughout the US and internationally, including ‘Re/pro/ducing Complexity’ with work by Jorinde Voigt and Nelleke Beltjens at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (BE), Städtische Galerie Villa Zanders (DE), VOLTA NY, Kentler International Drawing Space (NY), Kunstraum (NY), Bangkok Art and Culture Center (TH), Pallazo Vendramin Costa (Venice IT). Brouckaert is currently living and working in Queens NY and Ghent (BE).


A knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness  - 2014
Magazine clippings, human hair, pins and wire
variable dimensions


A knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness  - 2014
Magazine clippings, human hair, pins and wire
variable dimensions


A knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness  - 2014
Magazine clippings, human hair, pins and wire
variable dimensions


A knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness  - 2014
Magazine clippings, human hair, pins and wire
variable dimensions
Installation in September 2014 at the Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn NY


Illusive Flesh of Light XX - 2015
Drawing on archival print on MOAB paper
55 x 42,5 cm/ 21.6 x 16.7 inches

Illusive Flesh of Light XVII - 2015
Drawing on archival print on MOAB paper
55 x 42,5 cm/ 21.6 x 16.7 inches


Statement

Advertising images of magazines and mail order catalogues are the source of my drawings and installations. I am interested in the tension between the highly representational and readable starting point - advertisements, which have to get a message across as clearly as possible - and the abstracted, illegible result of my layering process. The media defines our experience of the world extensively, maybe more than our direct experiences do.

The images I use often have extremely high production value.  Magazines arriving as a pristine, glowing object in the mail or on the newsstand yet meant to disappear quickly and to become trash, to be replaced by the most recent up to date information. My work on the contrary, is the result of an antiquated and slow process. It refers to the culture that produced them, but totally transforms the original narrative.

The site-specific installation ‘a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness’ is created of tarnished magazine clippings of hair that I connected with lots of dress-maker pins and sewed together with a needle and my own hair. Glossy magazine images of abundantly waving hair are often a symbol of sexual power and eternal youth, in contrast to my own hair, which is falling out and graying as evidence of decay and death in my physical body. I see the piece as a memento mori, a means of considering the vanity of life in the hyper-consumer world of today.