In Palingbeek, Ypres, the permanent ComingWorldRememberMe sculpture by artist Koen Vanmechelen is officially inaugurated.
Remembering, helping, reflecting and connecting, those are the goals of CWRM. Between 2014 and 2018, this project, by artist Koen Vanmechelen and vzw Kunst, commemorated the centenary of WW I commissioned by the Province of West-Flanders as part of GoneWest, the cultural commemoration of WW I. Six hundred thousand clay statues shaped like hunched soldiers were molded and baked by participants of workshops in Belgium and abroad, to commemorate the six hundred thousand casualties on Belgium soil during WW I.
Between April and November 2018, the clay sculptures were part of ComingWorldRememberMe, Vanmechelen's temporary land art installation. Thousands of volunteers participated in the project and even more people visited the sculpture.
Now, July 2019, a permanent sculpture, incorporating the large fossil egg and 40 000 small sculptures by artist Koen Vanmechelen has been inaugurated.
The big egg is at the centre of the installation. The small sculptures roll from it in an organic manner, almost as if they are being born. They are the children of a torn world. The whole represents a map of the world, with all the continents connected. The plinth consists of the sculptures themselves. They support each other, stand on each others’ shoulders, the larger ones carrying the smaller ones. The mother egg can be seen as the mass, the sculptures are the energy that is carried across the world. Each and every one of the sculptures, and the victims they represent, is an ambassador of the ineradicable hope for a different, better world. What is broken can be mended. Watch the report on the national news;
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2019/07/10/deze-beeldjes-blijven-voor-altijd-in-de-palingbeek/?fbclid=IwAR2KrPhAgpHITPEaYk1AVgkneLURNoAR5CCvzmKaSuPb-7-7OJWnbaeXzlE
