2020
Installation of 5 Posters at the fishery in Ostend
This project is based on the stories of Miete Delanghe. They say she was a witch in the coastal region of Belgium, and that she possessed the power to curse women, seduce men and bewitch children. Upon further research I discovered that she was a fish vendor. The fishery industry, even today, is still led by many different superstitions such as the one that a woman on a ship means bad luck.
One of the stories about her describes how she worked as a cleaning lady in a printing house, where she learned the meaningless Latin Lorem Ipsum script. One day she was begging for food by the Ostend fishery and started shouting these Latin words at the fishers pretending she was cursing them. They went to sea without feeding her and never returned, which is how Miete Delanghe earned her reputation as a witch. From then on, fishermen would feed her to avoid bad luck at sea.
In order to bring this story back to the present I created Lorem Ipsum posters and hung them at the locations where she supposedly bewitched the fishermen. Delanghe is described in most of the stories as a lonely and hideous woman, which explains why many people believed she was a witch. This is an ode to Miete Delanghe.
See also: they say she was - Artist Conversation with Erien Withouck
