Benoît Christiaens
Untitled
2023
Sculpture in wood, moss and palm bark

This piece, the bust of an African man with severed hands and missing arms, adorned with palm bark and polyurethane foam, was acquired following Benoit Christiaens' "¿Un mundo nuevo?" residency and exhibition at New Space in 2022-2023. This sculpture symbolizes a tragic colonial past while echoing contemporary climate concerns. The juxtaposition of natural elements in this work - the wood previously carved by another artist-craftsman and the piece of tree left raw, ironically protected by a fragment of a polluting, insulating material - prompts us to meditate on the relationship between humans and nature, and the complex interactions that bind them together.