Hello everyone,
My name is Marilou van Lierop and I live and work in Antwerp, Belgium.
My art practice consists of the research of aspects of complexity, chaos and order. I explore the laws of nature and how they relate to natural, social and existential phenomena.
On the one hand, I make o/a paintings on large, semi-spherical convex surfaces. These volumes are to be found in indoor rock climbing gyms. They refer to abandoned places with reminiscences of a range of human activities. The indoor rock climbing wall as an artificial reconstruction of the mountain. The landscape around Biella is varied and ranges from wild, mountainous areas, sometimes inaccessible sometimes open, to the plains.
On the other hand, I create large-scale paintings and video’s. They depict what crowds of people do and/or how they behave during contemporary rituals and circumstances (carnival, politics, Covid 19).
My main interest is situated in the natural and social worlds
and the laws of nature that apply on both. What are the methods we use to “organize” our habitat? What about the illusion of control of “the wild” that surrounds us? During my residency, I would like to explore this subject more.
Also, I intend to focus on the arbitrariness of our behavior and the underlying fabric of group dynamics. Specifically with a focus on large crowds, looking at them as one organism.
Being cut off the group, being cut off my film-project due to the Covid 19 pandemic, will be an inspiration I also want to explore in Biella: the (physical) absence of the group and what it does to a single person.
http://www.marilouvanlierop.be
There is this chaos we live in. A non-chaos perhaps. Or still a chaos but only because we decided to name it as such. The whole and his parts. The fragments and their affiliations. The individual and the crowd. They are intertwined. But what happens when this individual is cut of his group? As in the lockdown. For this research I approached a small group of football supporters. Their identity so much entwined with their team. What are the consequences? By interviewing and through a common project, the process of distancing from and reflecting about the relation to the group, the social disruption during lockdown, came to the surface.
No longer an observer, an outsider. Not looking at social phenomena as if they present their selves in a petri dish. But being connected with the group. Mutual influence, mutual processes. So the idea of burning the maquette of the football stadium, emerged. Like a common ritual, like bonfires. With the common and archaic fascination for the fire.
The interviews were revealing. Listening. Building the maquette together, and the shared experience of the burning, made it able to bring up things that otherwise rest hidden under the surface. More insight, more in-depth.
What happens when everything is “back to normal” after corona? Will the “normal” than be changed? Having to undergo a long period of distancing from the group, does it change how it will be experienced in the future? How disruptive was this period? This is the follow-up for my research project.
I will carry forward the attitude of not working top-down, but working the other way around. Letting the energy and ideas come from the group the way up, things emerge that could not evolve in another way.