Lola Daels, M-resident

Since early September, M has had another new resident. For five months, artist Lola Daels (1990) will be able to focus on creating new work in the M studio.

I am worried about the planet. And you see that in my art.

Lola Daels

M-resident

Lola: ‘I am a keen collector, have been all my life. They don’t necessarily have to be valuable things. In my studio I have boxes full of avocado pits, coffee pads, matchboxes, etc. Perhaps I will never do anything with them, but I’m incapable of letting them go straight away. At a certain point, I decided to create works with them, to try and tell the story behind that object.’

‘When I began to travel more – for residencies, but also just out of interest – I saw with my own eyes that things aren’t going too well with the world. Places like the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the salt plains in Iran are clearly suffering from pollution and climate change – a direct consequence of the fact that we humans are walking around on this planet. I am worried about this and I try to have the smallest possible environmental impact myself. I buy unpackaged organic food. I try not to fly any more. I don't eat meat. Things like that. And inevitably this worry is expressed in my work and in the materials that I use.’

The switch

‘This happened during a residency in Paris. I was making a series of replicas there of a stone that I had discovered in Morocco. I found it extremely beautiful and interesting, but according to a geologist I had consulted it was dried, petrified clay with no real value. This really bothered me. I thought: how can you just decide for everyone that this stone has no value?! I began to think deeply about value and authenticity, and this is where the work – the replicas of that stone – originated. I made them from epoxy resin, actually a dirty, polluting material.’

‘But when the series was completed, I decided never to make anything like that again. It didn’t make sense for me. I go about life so consciously: what I eat, what I wear, how I travel… Except you didn’t see that in the materials I use to make art. Since then I have made the switch to natural materials, such as sand, salt, soap, clay, stone, and so on. These are often ephemeral, so that is not always easy.’

‘I am highly aware of my legacy as an artist – as someone who, by definition, is creating new things. That’s one of those philosophical questions that keeps popping up: if you truly, truly want to do good for this planet, then you would be better off not existing. And you certainly wouldn’t make things and leave them behind. So if I decide after all to create works with materials that will continue to exist for some time, then at least I want to include a very clear message in them and be highly self-critical.’

Grotto of the virgin mary

‘One good example is a work that I made in rocaille: 150.3 CO2. Rocaille, or rustic cement, is something with which we are all familiar from the grottos dedicated to the Virgin Mary: you mimic natural elements such as rocks or branches in cement. This again raises the question of authenticity and value. Where does the urge to mimic a grotto come from, and often in the middle of a city at that? Anyway, I became fascinated by this technique and I went to train under one of the last four rocailleurs in Belgium, Françoise Lombaers.’

‘I don’t own a car, but when a friend gives me a lift, I see all those big Shell posts beside the motorway. At one point I was reading about fossil fuels, and how they dump CO2 into our seas and oceans. So much that the water acidifies and the corals and shells dissolve. So how hypocritical is it that an oil company should choose a shell, of all things, as their logo? I then decided to make a post like that in rocaille with a scallop shell on top. And to apply a natural texture to the pole – imitation wild cherry bark, to be precise. For me, this is a dark, critical work, but also rather funny. The rocaille technique is so very kitsch! I don’t believe in being preachy either, as it can be counterproductive. It shouldn’t be too in your face.’

‘Incidentally, the name alludes to the kilos of CO2 that were emitted to make and transport the work. Initially, it was 135 CO2, but each time the piece is moved, that figure goes up a little. The work is currently in Middelheim.’

150,3 kg CO₂, Lola Daels, 2022, photo: Eline Willaert

Leuven or São Paulo

‘After graduating from LUCA School of Arts, I went to work for a Portuguese artist as a production assistant. But after a few years, I realised that I shouldn’t be working for someone else, that I needed to make things myself. I missed that too much.’

‘I then started to apply for residencies. These were often abroad: Morocco, Iran, but also Paris, for example. They have been so very important in the development of my work, and in the questions that I started asking myself. But I’m really happy to be able to do a residency in Belgium for a change. When M asked me, I had just been accepted for a residency in Brazil as well. I spent a few weeks really agonising about the decision: 5 months in São Paulo or 5 months in Leuven... But ultimately, I chose M.’

The Great Barrier, Lola Daels, 2021-2022, photo: Eline Willaert

Faux Shell, Lola Daels, 2022 © photo: Eline Willaert

Sanding

‘I already have a pretty good idea of what I’m going to work on during my residency. I absolutely must plan and think ahead because what I do is very labour-intensive. If I only start thinking about it in September, then by the end of the residency I’ll probably only just have got my materials together.’

‘There are two Italian techniques I would like to work with. One is called scagliola, a kind of imitation marble. You make it by colouring plaster, kneading it into a kind of loaf shape and cutting slices off it. Ironically enough, it costs as much as real marble, because sanding all those slices is enormously labour-intensive. It can easily take you a whole day to do a piece measuring 20 x 20 cm. The craft has more or less died out, precisely because it’s so arduous.’

‘At M I want to create a series of sculptures in scagliola. It won’t be easy. Making the moulds is already a serious undertaking, and there will be a huge amount of sanding to do. But I’ve wanted to do it for so long, and now I finally have the opportunity.’

‘The other Italian technique I’d like to experiment with during the residency is called pietra dura – literally: hard stone. The technique was introduced in the Renaissance, and is similar to wood inlay, except you use stone: marble, malachite, lapis lazuli … This is also an extremely time-consuming and therefore expensive technique. I first encountered it at the Museo Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence. This is a small museum, but the technique is so fascinating that you can easily lose yourself in it for a whole day. It is only really in Florence that the craft is still practised, in workshops where they hand it down from generation to generation. It’s also a very closed shop. It’s not somewhere into which outsiders can penetrate, I’ve found. In the end, after a long search, I was able to apprentice myself to a craftsman in England.’

Honest feedback

‘I chose the residency at M because it is the perfect place to expand my Belgian network. And what’s more, you can focus on the development of your work there. For example, you get a budget to invite curators to come and look at your work. That is very valuable. I would really like to have honest, critical feedback on my work. After you’ve graduated – in my case that was in 2014 – that doesn’t happen anymore. It is good for you to be pulled out of your own world from time to time and to get to hear someone else’s vision. Truly, I’m really looking forward to those five months at M.’

More about the residence of Lola