C’est dans ma nature at Transit Gallery, Mechelen, Belgium

“Exactly twenty years ago, the municipality of Aulnay-sous-Bois, in the French department of Seine-Saint-Denis, invited Johan Creten to participate in a sociocultural, community-building project. The artist had a blank slate. During his walks through the city, he noticed that a considerable number of social housing façades were showing signs of damage. Was he thinking, through his poetic universe, and with the help of students from the local art academy, about a permanent artwork that could heal the architectural wounds?” - Barbara de Coninck

“C’est dans ma nature was never installed against the damaged façades of the social housing blocks. During the implementation of his project, the artist collided with the walls of politics. He then settled upon an aesthetic re-transcription of the idea of the wall. He placed the sixty-three bas-reliefs in Sèvres stoneware on wooden panels, ten in total, within a décor of imitation brick. The panels were mounted onto metal structures that were equipped with large wheels. The artwork was mobile and ready to hit the streets.”

“The work subsequently found a long-term home at the Thomas More College in Mechelen. From 2013 to 2021, it was exhibited on the high concrete wall opposite the large auditoriums, a rather non-descript environment, from a spatial perspective. In advance of planned renovation work at the college in 2022, the work was dismantled in August 2021 and transferred to the Transit Gallery. On the occasion of this movement on Mechelen’s Zandpoortvest, the panels were reassembled on their wheeled metal structures. It was pleasing to know that a ceramic artwork such as ‘C’est dans ma nature’ remained in the Zand(poort)-Umwelt [surroundings] a little while longer. Only time will tell in which collection the artwork — which touches upon themes such as identity, territoriality and interculturalism (all subjects that would determine the future development of Johan Creten’s oeuvre) — will find its permanent home.”