top of page

CWXRM - COMBAT

Remembering, helping, reflecting and connecting. That is the aim of COMBAT, the NGO coordinating ComingWorldRememberMe (CWRM), a project commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War. The ultimate goal of CWRM is the production of 600,000 small clay statues, one for every person killed on Belgian soil during WW1, by the end of 2018, the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. The statues are made by the public, aided by international workshops. From April until November 2018, they were part of a land art installation by Vanmechelen in the Palingbeek in Ypres, former no man’s land. Afterwards thousands of sculptures were given away to the public, hereby transforming thousands of living rooms into mini-museums. In July 2019 a permanent installation was inaugurated with the remaining sculptures and the fossil egg.

Koen Vanmechelen says: “We are the others and the earlier generations. Without knowing them and their story, our world remains directed fiction. We need people who break the scale, who test the DNA and the stories in that DNA. We need to create a new, transparent mirror that does justice to the past and offers perspective in the future. Until the egg is transparent, it must be broken and weighted, time and time again...”


The story of CWRM originates in the crossing of a basic idea of curator Jan Moeyaert with the very heart and soul of the oeuvre of artist Koen Vanmechelen. This crossbreed gave rise to the story of the art installation ‘ComingWorldRememberMe’ for ‘Gone West’, the remembrance and commemoration period for the WWI centenary.

​​

NEWS
IMAGES
bottom of page