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

(c)image: AMVK
De Mens in het Dier, 1985
Series , dimensions variable
acrylic and felt tip on Plexiglas

(The Human in the Animal)

"The installation De mens in het dier, which I made for the International Cultural Centre (ICC) on the Meir in Antwerp, was shown in a more extensive version at the Association for the Museum of Contemporary Art (VMHK) in Ghent. I stuffed that space with even newer work and added Een kwestie van hormonen (A Matter of Hormones) to the title.

In retrospect it was, all together, perhaps a bit overwhelming and insufferable, but at that moment I was not interested in any aesthetic presentation of my work. Everything I had made within this particular period, I wanted to show together, because my father had just died. I wanted to show what went on in my head; it had to be shown, as an overload of visual information.

Curator Jan Hoet hated the exhibition, made a lot of noise and was running about shouting ‘Shame!’ I was completely shocked. Four years later, he began to like my work better. Multiples were made from these works for the Friends of the Museum."

 

− AMVK