Anne Mie van Kerckhoven
Sonsbeek 2026
City Center Arnhem
Inleiding
Mystiek Hexagram (Mystic Hexagram), 2026
Photo: Marjon Gemmeke
The erotic meets machine-fetishism in Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven’s drawings, works on paper and textile, videos, murals, and installations. With her straightforward feminist tone, the artist integrates science, philosophy, mysticism, technology, and social issues. In this new commission, her recurring spiral motif is activated as a healing principle that shapes her large-scale, living flower carpet laid out according to the Milky Way’s double-spiral formation. In front of Arnhem’s city hall, the benevolent, living structure endures and transforms, its spiral signaling humanity’s yearning for the primal movement from which it emerged, from the immense scale of the cosmos to the intimate one of birth. Incorporated into the design is Piet Slegers’s Evolution (1960) whose bronze form conveys his interest in space travel, conducive to the era in which the 1966 Sonsbeek edition took place. Watching from the right corner is Ossip Zadkine’s Phoenix (1944) installed in the 1952 edition. A phoenix rises from the ashes as an expression of war trauma, particularly that of Arnhem residents. Van Kerckhoven’s design considers how the city’s scarred history is remembered, responding with a healing spiral that is the blueprint for our galaxy and attending to the capacity for creation at the root of human experience and beyond. The six flower pots at the base of the work mark the six points of the hexagram symbolizing divine and human harmony. Near the sixteenth-century Duivelshuis (devil’s house) next door—now Arnhem’s town hall, its facade adorned with satyr heads that ward off evil spirits—the carpet becomes an “open forcefield of creational rotation” as a female, erotic countermove to the satyr’s mischievous, lustful energy. In the final month, the carpet’s energetic field spirals outward as visitors are invited to take the plants and pots home.
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About the artist
Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (b. 1951, Antwerp) is an Antwerp-based artist. In her drawings, works on paper and textile, videos, murals, and installations, the erotic meets machine-fetishism with a straightforward feminist tone, intersecting science, philosophy, mysticism, technology, and social issues. In the early 1980s, neuroscientist Luc Steels invited her to the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Brussels to create visual languages with scientific imagery. Since 1981, with her partner Danny Devos, she is part of key experimental band Club Moral. In 2023, she was the second artist featured in the FAÇADE series, KANAL–Centre Pompidou, Brussels. Her solo exhibitions have been held at venues including Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, 2022 (a.o., since 1982); Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin, 2025 (a.o., since 2000); M HKA, Antwerp, 2018 (and 1999); Kunstverein Hannover, 2017; Kunstverein München, 2014; Mu.ZEE, Ostend, 2012; The Renaissance Society, Chicago, 2011; and WIELS, Brussels, 2008. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at venues such as S.M.A.K., Ghent, 2019 (a.o., since 2003); ICA, Philadelphia, 2013; and The Artist’s Institute, New York, 2011. Her work is in collections including Kunsthalle, Bern; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels; M HKA; S.M.A.K.; Mu.ZEE; and the University of Chicago.
Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven would like to thank Dick Eerbeek of Plantencentrum Eerbeek for the plants and support, Ton Lenting for coordination and general support, Jip van Leeuwenstein for technical assistance, Danny Devos for personal and logistical support, and Andreas Depauw for graphic design.
Commissioned by Sonsbeek 2026 in collaboration with the Hartwig Art Foundation. Made possible in part by ‘Vlaanderen verbeelding werkt’ and the BNG Cultuurfonds.