Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (also known as AMVK) is an artist of singular complexity. Born in 1951 in Antwerp, where she still lives and works, she has been active since the 1970s as a visual artist, graphic designer and performer. She has always been a pioneer. She should, first and foremost, be considered an artist for the future. AMVK’s practice is truly interdisciplinary.

M HKA wants to introduce Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven to a wider audience as an innovator of forms and interpreter of moods - as oxygen of the whole society.

AMVK: Works

(c)image: AMVK
La Science du Bien et du Mal, 1999-2003
Series , dimensions variable

"Evil is a point of view or the  organised science as Mysterientheater.

What astonished me as a small child was that at school, on a certain moment, one could choose between religion and morality, that the distinction between good and bad could be examined from different angles. That stupefaction was still the reason why a number of years ago I bought "La Science du Bien et du Mal" (the science of good and evil).

The book was published in 1848,in Paris, and was written by a certain Victor Géhant. It has "la Philosophie de la Révélation" as a subtitle. Géhant starts his account with: Man has a triple activity: he loves, he understands and he wants... That activity has one single principle, substance: the soul.

In 1999, such as I did more in the past, I have intuitively controlled a hopeless love-sickness by the use of a cycle of works. Systematically, day after day, I linked a title chapter of "La Science du Bien et du Mal" with a soft-porno picture from my collection. Two years later I scanned the pictures into my computer, coloured them and made the texts less readable.

Paul Vandenbroeck, curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, came recently to my studio and pointed out the fact that spirit and contents of "La Science du Bien et du Mal" rely on the book "Le Miroir des Ames Simples et Anéanties et qui simplement demeurent en Vouloir et Désir d'Amour" (The mirror of Simple and Crushed Souls and who simply remain in Volition and Longing for love ) of Marguerite Porete (Flemish-French, 1251-1310).

The book was published in 1302. Porete was an independent beguine, a mystica who in 1312 with ao. Meister Eckhart was conciliary execrated. In 1310 she was burned at the stake in Paris with her book, under supervision of all the high officials of the Sorbonne. Le Miroir is a theatrical evocation of the fight between reason and love, between false theology and real mysticism. Still in the tradition of the courtoisie, her writing is penetrated with "La rage d'aimer" (The rage of love), this absolute fury which brings peace across all fear; she gives certainty to be loved, if necessary until inside the heart of hell.

A book naming itself a mirror reflects reality, but it also reflects the one who reads it. It is an invitation to reflect oneself in order to come closer to reality. The medieval mirror hides just as much as it shows. Because of the language in which the book is written is not absolute, the reader also becomes interpretator and undergoes an inner transformation of sacramental order. Only in 1946, Marguerite Porete was rehabilitated, in Italian, thanks to Romana Guarneri."

− AMVK, 2002