During the first Covid lockdown in 2020, when we were only restricted to 2 kilometers, I was walking from one beach to the other. Then my eye fell on a rock with a little white stone on it. Written on the stone, in what looked like a young girl’s handwriting, was the following message: ‘Covid, I am lonely.’ That attempt at connection inspired me. After half an hour walking there by the sea, I added ten more white stones to the rock. I kept doing this gesture daily, like a ritual. Other walkers started copying me and the Covid shrine became not only a personal ritual but a collective monument of connection. Laying a stone at the temple is sharing your intention and special wish with the universe and releasing it to the elements.
-- Els Dietvorst
Images: Els Dietvorst and Ali Dietvorst
Texts: Els Dietvorst, Carine Fol, Karla Sanchez and Stefan Vanthuyne
Graphic design: Sadrie Alves
Published by Stockmans Art Books & Track Report (Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp)
Print: Bruno Devos, Stockmans Art Books
→ This publication is part of the PhD research 'Partisans of the Real', conducted by Els Dietvorst at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and ARIA - UAntwerp.
→ ‘Coastal Shrine’ is published in parallel with the exhibition 'This is what you came for' in CENTRALE for Contemporary Art and Bozar Brussels, in the context of the BelgianArtPrize.
For sale at the library of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp or via art&research@ap.be or
