Ilse Van Roy

A new consciousness has marked the last few decades, awakened like an elephant in the glass stores of our capitalist society due to the global economic and environmental crisis. We are vulnerable, not forever young, not forever pretty, not forever powerful. Nature is fragile; once the balance is destroyed, it will inevitably hit us back. Each individual realises that he is somewhere in that cycle, between that beginning with birth and the end that will surely come, but does not reveal its secrets.

The work of Ilse Van Roy depicts this intermediate stage, in which we all are ‘in-between’ these phases, always uncertain, on the edge of the abyss, vulnerable forever, to all eternity. Ready to forever remind us that we should not run away anxiously. We can stand still and have a look because nothing is forever, nothing is good or bad, and nothing is unbearably ugly or divinely attractive. It is both. Black is light. Silently, the work whispers something we have to dwell on now and then: ‘Memento Mori’... remember that you will die.