SMAK-director Philippe Van Cauteren’ statement, coming back from his trip to India a few years ago, was ‘Art can’t ignore the world’. The famous German artist Joseph Beuys political engagement in Die Grünen around 1982 is wellknown. He figured as co-author of the political programm of the first German ecological political movement. And around the same time the wellknown French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu published his ‘Distinction. A social critique on the judgement of tast’. Bourdieu analyses in ‘La Distinction’ the cultural behavour of the (western) European middle class and their way to distinct themselves from the lower middle class.

What’s the social-political function of art anno 2020? In a European context, in a Cuban context or in a world without fronteers anymore? A world in which the political agenda should be dominated by the climate desastre …

These questions, without answer, are turning around in Ekkiz’ head.

Rompecabezas. Tromp d’oeil. Clin d’oeil…
Art as semi-intellectual entertainment?
Or sculpting political poetry?

Let’s talk about ART

Exotica/Amazonia' is about tropical desire or the imagination/sublimation of these kind of strange desires. Exuberance full of light and color. And so called erotic or organic forms. A phantasy, a false one, of a long gone past. Thanks to the younger generation of climat activists ‘climate’ became political topic number one. Of should be. ‘Talking green/hablando verde’, ‘las mariposas/the butterflies’, ‘flowers for the Amazon’, …

I remember it very well,  just like it happened yesterday. Driving through the French Provence, my beautiful daughters in the back bench, the warm wind, the smell of herbs, the beauty of 'Les Dentelles de Montmirail', that hidden valley where we were living during that holiday. And the breaking news on the radio in my car about the Tsjernobyl nuclear disaster. And on the other day they were talking about the nuclear clouds on their way to Scandinavia. We did not need a lot of fantasy to realize that those clouds could easily reach the Provence. Driving back home, we were driving past that huge nuclear site of Pierrelatte. I did not tell anyone about my secret plan: I needed to build machines who were able to transport the Provence to a safer place. That's the story behing those small scaled machines, those landscape transporters. The scale is around 1/100.000.

This particular story of about 25 years ago, the origin of those machines, became hot news again around 5 years ago. Nobody ever heard about a place called Fukushima before that time.  But suddenly everybody who was listening to the radionews knew the name of that far away place. Is it an Island? Nobody knows.  Another nuclear disaster. But they managed it to let it disapear from the hitlines within one week. It seemed of less importance, only a small accident, not a rehearsal of that Russian disaster. And a detail: it happened underwater. It is easy to hide, no? Who were 'they', that's the question. In this case, without any doubt, the powerfull Japanese nuclear lobby could delete this disaster from the newslines. So I decided to investigate on my own what was happening underwater in and around Fukushima. I navigate with my private (yellow) submarine overthere and came back with the drawnings for the sculptures 'The Fukushima Landscapes'. The scale is around 1/100.000.

Arriving on Lampedusa or more recently in Cadiz or a marvellous stretch of mediterrean beach. Desperate, everything&nothing left behind. Since decades...’The blue bodies’, ‘cabeza’, ‘the long farewell’, ‘Santa Amalberga de las Canarias’, ‘torsos de Lampedusa’, …

‘Measuring the clouds’ (‘cadrage-nuage’), ‘listening to the rain’, ‘le transport des nuages’, ‘begging for water’.

Black Live Matters, BLM, one of the hot topics in 2020. A new hot topic? As old as the slave trade and slavery. And Leopold II, the long time ago king of Belgium became a privileged victim of that renewed black consciousness. Destroy his monuments, paint that asshole in red, etc. So, let’s delete (colonial) history …?

Listening to the sea’: a small scaled, fragile collection of art by nature of the Cuban coasts near Havana.

Goddess of the sea and fertility. She is part of the city-life in Havana. She arrived 500 years ago from the West-African coast on those slaveships. But she's alive and kicking.

Once upon a time … Cuba did not exist yet. There was only the depth of the sea. After innumerable vulcanous eruptions, animals appeared on the Caribean islands. Walking on those rough, hostile beaches in the Havana-neighbourhood, you can find their history.

Shango means man of fire, god of war and virility. An echo of Yoruba-culture in Cuba.

Sin palabras. Without spoiling words on the beauty of the female body.

To be honest, I am scared of swimming in the deep sea because I need to feel the ground at all times, even when I am swimming. Does the sea belong to the earth or is she made of a substance between soil and air? A floating substance, endless and threatening. I am not talking about water. That's something completely different. Water is the liquid that comes out of the tap every time you open it.

I am sure Daniel Kahneman, (Shrink, Jewish, Nobel Prize winner and author of 'Thinking, Fast and Slow') can explain my fear. Why am I shocked by a completely unknown picture published in the National Geographic magazine of August 1991? A few young Cubans are walking around the Port Avenue, Havana, in the direction of the sea. You can't see their faces, they are carrying huge inner tubes like Mexican sombreros on their head and shoulders. They're on their way to the Malecón, the dike, to jump into the sea. Most of them will never reach the Promised Land at the other side of the sea. How many thousands of young Cubans are silently laying at the bottom of the sea? That picture is the starting point of a serial of collages with in the center, Yemaya, the santeria-goddess of the sea and fertility. The African goddess, the orishas, arrived with the slaveships a long time ago. The orishas are defined in colours and connected with materials, they'e not defined as a figure, as a statue. So Yemaya can also be hidden within a flying fish. A flying fish is able to protect those poor, stupid Cubans. She is that powerful, she 's able to solve any problem.

YEMAYA, goddess of the sea & fertility. Again. An echo of Yoruba-culture, of the long forgotten and far away West-African coast, of the vibrant culture in Havana city anno 2016. Yemaya is not a precisely defined figure, she is associated with colors and materials. So it is a queste to define her. For example in massive wood, pear tree. She's sensual of course, it is about fertility. Is there a connection with the search for the lost Paradise, with Eve and the apple?

Is she dead or still alive? Sleeping or dreaming? What happened to herw