The Torment of the Waves is an installation of sixteen bronze cowries, conceived for the beach at Middelkerke as part of Beaufort27, the contemporary art triennial of the Belgian coast.
The cowrie is a small shell. For a long time it served as currency, including in the transatlantic slave trade, where it was exchanged for human lives. In West Africa as in Brazil, it is also an object of divination, adornment and protection. Enlarged and cast in bronze, it becomes here a place of memory for those the sea has crossed.
Each cowrie is engraved with a two-line stanza from a poem. From one shell to the next, the poem moves from torment to silence, facing the North Sea.
The project extends research carried out in Senegal with the support of ADAGP, where 3D modelling and printing serve as tools for thinking through form before casting.
The work is in progress. Unveiling in March 2027.
Technical details
Title The Torment of the Waves (La Tourmente des Flots)
Year 2027
Type Installation
Location Middelkerke beach, Belgium
Context Beaufort27, contemporary art triennial, A Shared Horizon, curated by Léo Marin
Status In progress
The Torment
Sixteen stanzas, one per cowrie.
1
Your body takes root in me
From the water, tomorrow springs
2
I am your mother house,
Dwelling of every path
3
My name written in the sand
Opens the way to the sea.
4
What could I tell you,
If I were, this day, hollowed out?
5
The torment of the waves
Is a distant memory
6
Every skin carries within it
A path traced in water.
7
At the touch of your body,
The high sea rises
8
The salt of swallowed bodies
Does not dissolve the bitterness
9
Each name lost in you
Is a star that shines
10
Silent constellation,
Of interrupted lives
11
What do we owe the earth,
For the right to exist?
12
In the earth, the seed resists;
In the dream, freedom.
13
Greed drinks the infinite,
Nature knows its limits.
14
Beyond the border,
A shared horizon
15
For the body without a flag,
The incandescent ocean
16
In the silence of the waves,
The names that crossed resound.