Dries van Elke won the Hugo Roelandt Prize in 2025 with his graduation project at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. This prize honours Hugo Roelandt (1950–2015), a pioneer of Belgian performance art who deliberately operated outside the art market. It supports artists who work with performance, installation, photography and socially critical themes. M HKA invites Dries van Elke for an INBOX presentation, on view during Antwerp Art Weekend.

You won the Hugo Roelandt Prize with your graduation project at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Can you tell us about it?

DvE:  The 2025 happening on the Grote Markt of Antwerp was a raw outcome of the unplanned picketing sparked from a longing for contact with someone or something undetermined. The pastoral scenery contrasts the radical and aggressive signs displayed next to the entrance of the municipal building. The picket does not face the City Hall; instead, it's turned 180° in order to confront the blue sky, the pavement, and the birds — the gesture thrown into the opposite direction. This antagonistic longing serves as the gateway to my Riverheads presentation, dedicated to separation in the broadest sense of the word.

Could you elaborate on the theme of the river?

DvE: We often think of nature as the ever caring mother, and the rivers as the streams of love and nurture, but mothers are never perfect, that’s why we are truly able to love them. Rivers, to that extent, malevolent and sporadic — nothing kind about their existence. Often they decide what lives and what dies, and whoever is strong enough to get access to them will dominate. River becomes a form of exclusion, a rupture, separating the banks and the inhabitants. Those blessed to be at the head will nurture on the clean drink, while those catching tails downstream will suffer from the microbes of the mouths of those who sipped the waters first. But exclusivity is unavoidable when it comes to mothers; if they had to share all their love between everybody, their children would ultimately be left unloved.

M HKA invited you to make a presentation for INBOX. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

DvE: The intimacy of the INBOX space called for intimate works: a much more personal side of practice, citing nature, body and blood. The spiritual shape of these themes is reflected in the aggressive rectangle occupying and blocking the space. It makes it hard to squeeze in, but don't be discouraged to try for yourself.