Het Verdriet Van België by Hugo Claus

The novel paints an unflattering portrait of a Flemish collaborationist family in the years before, during and after the Second World War, but it is also the story of a wayward teenager who decides to become a writer.

The work

When this literary masterpiece was first published, its cover was draped with another masterpiece : "Muziek in de Vlaanderenstraat" by James Ensor.
Every time the somebody tweets the word ‘verdriet’, a subtle tear rolls down the digital canvas. Creating a completely random and constantly changing delicate interpretation of both works.
The exponentiality of change encourages the viewer to come to rest and absorb the fine nuances of this tableau.
This work is a (digital) tribute to two icons in Belgian history.

The artist: Wim Vanhendenfrom Ghent (BEL)

Born in the late seventies, Wim Vanhenden is a child of the first generation that grows
up with a personal computer in the living room.
He was raised in a creative family:
his father owned an art gallery and teaches painting, his mother is a ceramic artist and
his sister is a graphic designer, he himself has always been more attracted to computers
than to a painter's canvas.
In the mid eighties he started drawing his first experiments in BASIC on his Tandy
TRS-80 Coco II home computer.
From that moment onwards, life without computers is unthinkable for him.
Wim Vanhenden has exhibted former installations like ‘We Are The World’, ‘The
Interpretor’and more at Bozar, Cimatic Festival, Actionfields gallery and Zebrastraat
Gent where he was featured as artist of the month. Some of his work has been featured
in publications by Taschen, Focus Knack and Elle Magazine.