Ignace Cami is an artist that gives obsolete things renewal. Playing with the notion of ‘heritage’, he questions its place as being part of the natural law of society, whilst creating the conditions for its contemporary purpose and application. Today we see heritage with an overabundance of uses, from patrimony to carrots. Yet things that represent historical legacy have also become a site for contentions of the ideological kind, forming a friction between cultural stagnation and transformation. In this context, Cami asks such questions as: how might we relate to bygone cultural artefacts that are seen as inextricably connected to a place and a time? What happens when they are in the ‘wrong’ place or the ‘wrong’ time? What use is there for the archaic and the hyper-local? In what new ways can they find a meaningful place in the here and now?

For his exhibitionRE:ANKER, the verb verankeren (to connect with or to anchor) offers a way to understand Ignace Cami’s methodology for working with heritage and folk culture more broadly.

Artists: Ignace Cami