Heidi Voet

What position do we occupy in our cultural, historical and cosmic environment? The question runs like a leitmotif through the work of Heidi Voet. In playful, monumental installations and performances, she places everyday objects in a new relation to one another. Thus also in White Dwarfs and Supergiants. In the dunes of Koksijde she distributes a large number of coloured, concrete-cast balls. Whoever looks closely can distinguish the beach balls, golf balls or beach volleyballs by the imprint of their seams, textures and materials. You can thus symbolically link each ball to a specific social group in our society - from the golfing businessman to children playing on the beach.

But whoever zooms out and sees this work in its entirety recognises a different constellation. The artist calculated the configuration of the starry sky above Koksijde at the closing hour of Beaufort’s last day - and the placement of the balls reflects the position of these stars. Each ball reveals itself to be a star. The title White Dwarfs and Supergiants also refers to the evolution in the life of two types of stars. The ´White Dwarf´ is a small, very dense older star that is at the end of its life and slowly dying out. The young ´Supergiant´, by contrast, has the greatest luminosity, but burns out most quickly in its brief life. In relation to the immeasurable scale and time dimension of the star system, the visitor comes into contact with his own limitations. As the fossilised remains of a contemporary culture, the concrete balls confront us with the limitations of social structures and point to the place of the individual in a large symbiotic ecosystem.

This work is located in a protected nature area. Please remain on the paths and do not walk out into the dunes.