SCAR THE CAR

How do people mourn? How do we remember someone? How do we deal with the loss of something precious? Every culture, every conviction, every person deals with it in different ways, with specific rituals.

The project Scar The Car by Brussels based artist Eric Van Uytven, son and grandson of Brussels car mechanics, was planned to be a weekend-long happening at the gallery Waldburger-Wouters, coinciding with the opening of It Never Ends in KANAL at the end of April. The Covid-19 pandemic decided otherwise.

As a consequence the format of the project took a different form. In the aftermath of the lockdown the car travelled through Brussels, and was temporarily parked at different locations (Wiels, Recyclart, La Vallée, Gare de l’Ouest – Weststation and KANAL).   People were invited to scratch a word, symbol, phrase in the car body with the help of a simple tool, to mourn about what got lost during the lockdown. The act of scratching became a healing ritual, the car a mobile, sculptural medicine. Raw emotions, deep reflections and hopeful messages alternate, resulting in a car as a collective message. Finally the car was pushed through the streets of Brussels from the West Station to KANAL. The future museum in the former Citroën garage with its impressive showroom, dominating the Square Sainctelette and the Place Yser for almost ninety years, became the ideal final stop for a car that transformed into a sculpture.

Eric Van Uytven (Brussels, °1980), founded the Night Shop Chez Madeleine in Brussels, and organised exhibitions between 2017 and 2019. Today the project continues under the name of Garage Madeleine. Recently he exhibited at Recyclart, and was the author of Candy Shop at Chateau Nour in Anderlecht.