Elements

Based on a collaboration between art and cultural institutions in Dutch Limburg, Belgian Limburg and Liège, Elements is a publication–catalogue that gathers a series of art and design exhibitions and programmes that have taken place in 2021. 

Aiming to trace out a new material map of the Euregion the participating institutes chose an element to explore in an exhibition or through a public programme. Taking part in the project, the Jan van Eyck Academie gathered Elements partners' projects in a publication, which also doubles as a catalogue–exhibition.

The publication includes contributions by the Jan van Eyck alumni, current participants, and others who shed light on such classical elements as water, earth, fire, air which were proposed by ancient cultures (India, Hellenistic Egypt, Greece) to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler substances. They question how zinc, plastic, skin or electricity are part of a bigger story in which earth, fire, air and water are mined, polluted, intoxicated, genetically manipulated, technologically enhanced.

The exploration of the said core elements and their contemporary characteristics – shaped by processes of the anthropocene and toxicity – enables the collaborating institutions to further reflect on the project itself and pose questions about institutional roles within it at a time of enviornmental struggles.