Marie De Decker
A multidisciplinary artist, Marie De Decker draws on the language of fine craftsmanship to celebrate the living world, weave new narratives and open spaces for contemplation.
Her singular practice brings together gilding, sculpture and installation, image-making, drawing and performance.
Guided by questions of origins and transmission, Marie De Decker explores the correspondences between matter and memory.
Her dual cultural heritage—the lace of Flanders and the gold of the Mali Empire—nourishes her research.
The little-known mangroves of Mauritius are both her territory of inspiration and the laboratory for her commitment to sustainable creation. There, she gathers discarded objects and materials, combining them with natural elements through an ongoing process of experimentation.
Gold, the metal of origins, is used not to adorn but to reveal. It tells stories and inscribes them within collective memory. Freed from the surface, gold filigree draws in space. To defy gravity, Marie De Decker develops her own techniques, inspired by the craftsmanship of gilding and textiles.
POUDRE D’OR
At Poudre d’Or, the mangrove forms an in-between territory shaped by water, light and the tides. Roots, currents and matter meet without merging. Nothing is entirely stable; forms endure by transforming.
This ecosystem shapes my visual language. Feather and scale, weave and arabesque do not imitate nature: they extend its principles of organisation, based on repetition, variation and interdependence.
I also gather fishing nets and discarded materials there, marked by their time in contact with the ocean. Once incorporated into the works, they do not lose their history. They become fragments of a memory shared by the living world.
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GESTURE
Gold filigree takes shape through a direct gesture, often without a preliminary sketch. Drawing on the techniques of gilding and textile work, the process I have developed frees gold from the surface and allows it to inhabit space. The form is constructed line by line; every decision is irreversible.
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LIGHT
My training in photography shapes my relationship to matter. Chiaroscuro, reflections and shadow are not added effects: they extend the work and alter its perception. I work with twenty-seven shades of gold, left unvarnished so that their light can continue to change with the space and the viewer’s gaze.
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MATERIALS
Gathered fishing nets, mother-of-pearl, plant fibres and objects carrying a former life enter the works together with the memory of their uses and environments. I do not seek to neutralise this history, but to make it perceptible, allowing matter to become a site of transmission.
