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Mahjouba.
The future of crafts
TEXT: ARNE ADRIAENSSENS | PHOTOS: FRIES MUSEUM
Car and motorcycle enthusiasts will
not disagree: motorised vehicles can
be breathtaking. Yet, out of all their
parts, the engine is rarely the piece
that dazzles us with its allure. Eric Van
Hove’s art pieces are an exception
to that rule. With the help of artisan
hands from all corners of the world,
he creates beautiful power machines,
which he now exhibits in the Fries
Museum.
The story of Eric Van Hove is one without
borders. The Belgian artist spent many
years in Algeria but has spent a fair share
of his youth in Cameroon as well. “Eric
is not of one nationality,” explains Eelco
van der Lingen, curator of the exhibition
at the Fries Museum. “This is obvious in
his art, which is neither European, nor
African, but ‘glocal’. It talks about the
impact of local tendencies on the global
reality.” Throughout his oeuvre, Van Hove
mixes his fascination for craftwork with
the symbol and catalyst of industrialisation:
the engine. He removes it from its
context and duplicates it by hand. “This
creates a paradox, since engines and
crafts are each other’s opposites. You
assemble something by hand which will
afterwards replace the manual work itself.
Where engines turn, crafts die.”
Fenduq
Nevertheless, Van Hove’s work is no critique
on the way we manufacture things
today. It merely highlights the nature of
our modern production methods. “You
can almost draw a line on the world map
between the industrialised west and the
crafty south,” Van der Lingen illustrates.
“Here, we hardly manufacture anything by
hand anymore, whereas in most developing
countries it is the standard.” Therefore,
Van Hove has assembled a big team of
different artisans in Morocco to build the
machines with him. Each of them can
count on decades of experience and lots
of talent. In his workshop, which he calls
Fenduq, he and his team push the boundaries
of what crafts can manufacture today.
“Last year, the Fries Museum has
purchased ‘D9T’, one of Van Hove’s biggest
engines. The original D9T-engine was
designed for a bulldozer by Caterpillar,
for the construction industry. Yet, it became
infamous when restrictive regimes
58 | Issue 62 | February 2019