We may think that art, crafts and mechanics do not have anything in common, but Éric Van Hove would definitely disagree about this statement. In 2012 the artist started indeed a project that focused on these themes and practices.
Everything began with a sort of destructive phase: a V12 Mercedes-Benz engine was indeed disassembled in 465 parts, then the components were handed out to 57 craftsmen in Marrakesh. The artisans were instructed to make the same parts they had received using materials of their choice with techniques they could master.
Once completed the parts were reassembled and the result was a unique artwork - the V12 Laraki. The name references car designer Abdeslam Laraki who, in 2004 at the Geneva auto show, introduced the public to the Laraki Fulgura, the first supercar ever to be entirely created in Casablanca, Morocco.
The car actually had one part that wasn't produced in Morocco - a V12 Mercedes-Benz engine imported from Germany. But the low-tech approach of Moroccan craftsmen in sharp contrast with the original German high-tech production was a way for Van Hove and his team of artisans to challenge a Western industrial achievement and come up with a unique version of an engine for this car.
The artwork was inspired by a story Van Hove's father once told him about a water pump in a village in the north of Cameroon. When the pump broke the village suffered a water shortage and, to avoid wasting time waiting for technical support from the capital in the south, the local authorities decided to disassemble the water pump even though the villagers didn't have the needed knowledge to actually do so.
Each child in the village was given a component of the pump and was told to remember how and where that specific part should be put back. The broken part was then reproduced by a local craftsman and, with combined forces, the pump was reassembled according to the children's memory and was perfectly working when the service technician arrived.
After the V12 Laraki was acquired by the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA, Van Hove founded a Fenduq (a word combining the word "fenn", art in Arabic, and "funduq", meaning temporary inn, workshop and market place all in one) where craftspeople work as employees and not as self-employed workers or underpaid servants. Earning a steady income, they are therefore eligible for social security and are given the opportunity to travel abroad.
Together with the team, Van Hove developed further works such as the Dorigin (an expression borrowed from the French d'origine), a Mercedes 240D taxi which was entirely rebuilt using old spare parts. The result was a colourful Frankenstein-like vehicle with the various parts coming from taxis from different regions (the taxis in Meknes are pistachio green, those in Knefra/Tighassaline metallic blue green; Sky blue stands for Imzagame/Essaouira; ocher for Ouarzazate, white for Casablanca and orange for Larache).
A vehicle that had earned great prestige in Morocco, the Mercedes 240 was taken off the roads for a variety of environmental, financial and public relations reasons. Once completed Van Hove's Dorigin was driven back to Frankfurt, Germany, its country of origin, with a journey that was documented by the artist with a road movie. Upon its return to Germany, the car was mainly seen as a typical Moroccan car, its origin had mutated along the way.
Dismanting, recycling and reassembling a vehicle could be considered as a sustainable practice and Van Hove has actually been exploring also the possibilities offered by renewable energy sources: the artist's Mahjouba Initiative project consists indeed in a four-year artistic engineering endeavor to conceive an electric motorbike for the local Moroccan market and create in this way a social-economic model that can be used for the development of the moped (the first prototype, Mahjouba I, 90% handcrafted from locally sourced materials such as copper, camel bones and goat skin, was nominated for the Beazley Design of the Year 2017 Award at the Design Museum, London).
Van Hove developed further concepts involving mechanical parts: the D9T engine (Rachel's tribute) derives from the engine of a D9 series Caterpillar, a bulldozer originally designed in the '50s to help with the construction of new infrastructures in developing countries.
As the years passed, though, the D9 was employed also in military operations, for example in Vietnam and Africa and was also turned into a military vehicle by the Israeli army. So from a symbol of construction, the D9 turned into a symbol of destruction and oppression.
Van Hove recast the engine in a more positive light when he entlisted 41 different artisans to remake its 290 parts in 46 different materials from all around the globe. The artisans came from two countries with 20% of their respective active workforce in craft - Indonesia and Morocco - so this project was more about bringing Asian and African artisans together and allowing them to exchange their knowledges and experiences. The work is named after Rachel Corrie, an American activist who was crushed by an Israeli D9T in Gaza in 2003.
Sometimes casual findings inspired a project: VW Passat Gear Box and Renault Master I 2.5 D Gearbox are part of a series of sculptures Vvan Hove's Fenduq created out of used car parts found in the car repair souks (marketplaces) of Marrakesh; an Alfasud engine (Alfasud was developed in the '70s in Italy when the government tried to stimulate the southern economy by starting the production of a new state-sponsored Alfa Romeo plant in Naples. One of Alfa Romeo's most successful models, it eventually went out of production as the salty air of the south of Italy affected the steel of the car's body) was found on a scrapyard in Marrakesh and turned into an entirely new project.
Each piece developed in Van Hove's Fenduq is an extraordinary work of art, a celebration of traditional crafts and materials. If you read the notes accompanying these pieces when they are on display in museums, you will discover that they are made employing the most disparate materials, from white and red cedar wood to walnut, pine, lemon and orange wood, mahogany, peach and apricot wood; from mother-of-pearl and copper to nickel, iron, recycled aluminum, silver, tin, cow, goat and camel bone, agate, green onyx, stone, red marble of Agadir, black marble of Ouarzazate, white marble of Béni Mellal, pink granite of Tafraoute, horn and ammonite fossils from Erfoud.
The Fries Museum in Leeuwarden dedicated to Éric Van Hove the exhibition "Fenduq" in 2019: for that occasion the artist presented at the museum a new piece he was commissioned that celebrated Friesland – the engine block of a Claas Jaguar harvester (Fryske motor/Frisian engine). This time, though, the engine was reproduced by a group of Moroccan, Indonesian, Swedish and Frisian craftsmen. Frisian woodcarving was combined with Indonesian bone cutting; Harlinger tiling and Hindelooper painting were mounted alongside Swedish glassware and Moroccan processed copper.
After the lockdown, two works of art by Éric Van Hove (Algeria, 1975) will be on display again in the Fries Museum, the D9T and the Frisian engine, and they will be exhibited in the Hindelooper Room.
Van Hove's Fenduq is not just about crafts and traditions, but also looks at the future: we often forget about our identities, but Van Hove invites us to find back our roots and combine our experiences with those of other people. The Frisian Engine is the perfect example of Van Hove's intent: it represents a modern dialogue of cultures and crafts, a celebration of a new global identity and a reinvention of traditional crafts.
This is a key theme for him also because Van Hove was born in Guelma, Algeria, has a Belgian passport (his parents used to be engineers for the Belgian Foreign Affairs Ministry) and a Flemish family tree, but speaks French and grew up in Cameroon, so he considers his own cultural identity as African Belgian or Belgian African.
In a way Van Hove's projects also have a socio-economic twist about them: the final objects look visually intriguing, but behind each part there is a story and an artisan, a technique, a material and a unique experience.
It is indeed undeniable that Van Hove's engine block is a perfect metaphor for our global society: the engine is indeed made of small parts, each of them equally important to make it whole. Van Hove's engines also represent a union of two different worlds, the technological and the artisanal, the mechanical and the poetical and his Fenduq is a cosmo in which tradition and tech coexist.
Van Hove's work invites us therefore to consider a new model of development in which tradition and modernity are not juxtaposed but reunited. Maybe there is a degree of idealism and utopia behind these pieces that at times are also surreal and ironical, but Van Hove's Fenduq may turn into a model for a post-Covid creative studio and atelier, a place where boundaries are erased and where all the narratives of the people working there together are reunited in a socially engaged practice within a wider global dynamic.
Image credits for this post
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Éric Van Hove, D9T (Rachel's Tribute), 2015. Fries Museum Collection, Leeuwarden. Acquired with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, the BankGiro Loterij and the Friends of the Fries Museum. Photo: Lieven Geuns. Courtesy Éric Van Hove / Copperfield Gallery.
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Éric Van Hove, D9T (Rachel's Tribute) (detail), 2015. Fries Museum Collection, Leeuwarden. Acquired with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, the BankGiro Loterij and the Friends of the Fries Museum. Photo: Lieven Geuns. Courtesy Éric Van Hove / Copperfield Gallery.
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Éric Van Hove, Dorigin, 2016. Photo: Alessio Mei.
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Éric Van Hove, Mahjouba I, 2016. Fries Museum Collection, Leeuwarden. Acquired with support from the Mondriaan Fund. Photo: Alessio Mei.
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Éric Van Hove, V12 Laraki, 2013. Hood Museum Collection, New Hampshire / USA. Photo: François Fernandez.
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Éric Van Hove, V12 Laraki, 2013. Hood Museum Collection, New Hampshire / USA. Photo: François Fernandez.
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Éric Van Hove, V12 Laraki (detail), 2013. Fries Museum Collection, Leeuwarden. Acquired with support from the Mondriaan Fund. Photo: Keetja Allard.
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An artisan works on one of the components of the V12 Laraki. Photo: Keetja Allard.
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Group photo for the studio. Photo: Alessio Mei.
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Éric Van Hove, “Fenduq”, exhibition at the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden.
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Éric Van Hove, D9T (Rachel's Tribute) (detail), 2015. Fries Museum Collection, Leeuwarden. Acquired with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, the BankGiro Loterij and the Friends of the Fries Museum. Photo: Lieven Geuns. Courtesy Éric Van Hove / Copperfield Gallery.
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