Location: vaults

Ria Pacquée (b. 1954, Merksem) made an international breakthrough in the 80s with a sequence of performances. Her more recent work focuses on photos and video productions, but her experience as a performance artist still plays an important role. Pacquée looks for answers to the most fundamental questions of existence, with the street as her research field. Rituals and the ‘non-sense’ of religions are also important factors in her work.

Live action / performance: Ria Pacquée brings a performance to Sint-Jozefkerk

Just like Maria Abramovic´, Ria Pacquée (1954, Merksem) pushes her body to the limit for her performance art. A good example of this is Rückkehr Unerwünscht: in 1980 the artist locked herself away in a chapel in Bilzen, had herself hung from the ceiling by ropes and wrote the letters ‘RU’ on the wall, with blood from her throat. The letters stand for ‘Rückkehr Unerwünscht’, in other words ‘Return Undesirable’, and refer to the stamps the condemned souls were tattooed with on their way to the concentration camps under Hitler.

Live action / performance: Ria Pacquée delivers a performance at the Sint-Jozefkerk