COMMON GROUND


Series of 4 posters A2, Silkscreen on paper





The least you can say is that Sanne Claeys’ her work is layered. Literally and figuratively speaking. For this year’s edition of Stadsgardeville she researched the ‘Common Ground’, resulting in a series of screenprints visualizing the Brussels’ boundaries.

You work as an architect and urbanist. Do you think you look at a Brussels in a different way?
"For me Brussels has two faces: the fragmented capital, of a fragmented country, of a fragmented Europe and also the one city where all this fragmentation adds up to a certain unity. It’s a composition, or better a collage, of historical layers that are builded up, destroyed, expanded, fragmented and united."

The idea of different kind of layers can also be found in your own artwork. What do they symbolize in ‘Common Ground’? "
Layer 1 shows boundaries. Brussels is a city that has a wealth of contradictions, diversity and complexity. Fragmentation rules and all that influences how boundaries are shaped: There are the municipal boundaries which are rather abstract and only very often physically visible, and there are the real physical boundaries that divide, exclude. Layer 2 shows the backbone, the common ground: the form that really shapes the territory where we all must live together, and that creates relations between parts of the city. The point of observation is that in certain cases, boundary and common ground meet each other. Those spaces are margins that don’t have a meaning, though clearly carry the potential to create a ‘common’ identity and to face some of the urgent challenges. "



Participation in Group expo
Stadsgardeville 2.0 @Atelier Coppens, Brussels
October 2018