Museumplein 04 | Edith Dekyndt: Shadows from the Walls of Death

Jan Hoetplein connects several museums - S.M.A.K., MSK and GUM - and also breathes Ghent history: it is flanked on one side by the Ghent Botanical Garden, and embraced on the other by the Citadel Park as the epicentre of the 1913 World Expo.

Every five months, the project presents new works of art on flags for S.M.A.K., with the works seeking a connection with the square, the park, the city and its residents. They make us think about the role of art in public space.

For Museumplein, Edith Dekyndt (b.1960, Ypres) has created a series of flags inspired by nineteenth-century wallpaper, with its striking green floral patterns that were very much in fashion at the time. In a rapidly urbanising and industrialising society, this aesthetic evoked ideas of nature, health and modernity. The irony, however, is that the vivid green pigment also had a darker side: made with arsenic compounds, it released toxic fumes with serious health risks.

By re-using these nineteenth-century motifs, Dekyndt reveals the complexity of our relationship with nature. On the one hand lies our fascination with its beauty and the human urge to depict or possess it. On the other, the destructive impact of our actions on that very same nature. The flags expose how attraction and danger, admiration and destruction, often exist side by side. They serve both as a warning and as an invitation: to pause and reflect on the fragility of our environment, to consider the ecological consequences of our choices, and to take seriously our collective responsibility towards the world around us.

Museumplein is a project by artlead and S.M.A.K, supported by the City of Ghent.