Elias Cafmeyer

Elias Cafmeyer – Au Coeur Vaillant Rien d’Impossible, 2024

• Harensesteenweg 353, Vilvoorde

The project of Elias Cafmeyer refers to the industrial history of Buda, which housed factories of many important industries. Imagining the area as an archaeological site and an attraction for tourists in the far future, the installation Au Coeur Vaillant Rien d’Impossible represents fictitious ruins of a factory that may have been located on the site. As Buda undergoes a process of transformation, Cafmeyer’s work alludes to the history that is embedded in the very soil upon which future residential and recreational infrastructure will be erected.

The architectural design of the structure is influenced by the former Wanson company building, where industrial steam boilers and kettles were produced, used to heat other factories in Buda as well. The building was demolished to accommodate the construction of the new Haren prison, which stirred controversy in Buda and its surroundings due to its architectural importance and the factory’s role in advancing and implementing modern workplace concepts. The organisational philosophy extended to offering workers amenities such as free dental care, access to a library, and even a meditation room, all located on the factory premises. The Wanson building exemplified modernist architecture, drawing inspiration from the design of the Belgian pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Fair. It featured sculptural elements intended to inspire its workforce. The title of Cafmeyer’s work, translated into English as “nothing is impossible to a valiant heart,” is a reference to a slogan that was inscribed on one of the walls at Wanson. In Cafmeyer’s work, the factory ruin serves not only as a fictional tourist attraction for architectural history but also as a symbol of the decline of the company’s pride and the deterioration of human relations within the cultural dynamics between employers and employees.

About

Mainly working with sculptures and video installations, Elias Cafmeyer creates site-specific installations often in public space or inspired by the use of public space in the context of the city. He sees the city landscape as a metaphor for social construction and focusses on traces of urban development and forms of signage orchestrating mobility. His interventions deal with strategies such as inversion, juxtaposition and contrast, creating a sense of alienation. Apart from his video installations, Cafmeyer often uses raw, industrial material such as metal, untreated wood and concrete. His site-specific installations result often in tragicomical illusions questioning the use and the representation of public space and its impact on the social construction in the urban landscape. He hereby investigates the friction between the personal gain of its user and its developer. His goal is to exhibit the differences of interest of policy makers and inhabitants by evoking a sense of surrealistic exaggeration of changes in city planning. These interventions react to urban phenomena such as gentrification, disneyfication and urbanization of the rural landscape. Elias Cafmeyer had the opportunity to exhibit in prominent Belgian museums such as S.M.A.K. (Ghent) and Extra City (Antwerp). He made temporary installations for the public space in collaboration with the cities of Antwerp and Ghent. He was invited for several solo shows as independent artist by art galleries such as Keteleer and mariondecannière (Antwerp) and had the opportunity to show work in The Netherlands, Germany and France. His solo show at spazioSERRA in November 2022 is his first exhibition in Italy.