Photo: Pieter Delbeke
LEGS
On January 16, 1996, the life of Rebecca Lenaerts changed dramatically when she was hit by a garbage truck on her way home from school. A broken vertebrae squeezed the nerves towards her legs and as a result she could no longer walk.
While language and story have always taken a prominent place in her artistic work, Lenaerts is now working for the first time with material. From clay she molds twenty different legs. She makes the legs in the village of Halmaal near St-Truiden, a rural hamlet where she often spent her holidays as a child.
Traveling back and forth between Brussels and the countryside becomes a reflection on the desire for origin and change. Working with clay requires patience. The work process develops into a balancing act between grounded inertia and the will to move forward.
—- Halmaal,, 2011-2014.
“There is a friction between ‘the hands’ and ‘the head’, between ambitions and reality, between poor expertise and the urge for perfection. Thoughts rebel. Emotions push their way out. The clay legs are carriers of a wordless story that forces the viewer to stand stil.”
CREDITS: Concept and creation: Rebecca Lenaerts in collaboration with Frank Delbeke (ceramics)