Elise Eeraerts has competed her studies at the Institute fur Raumexperimente, Klasse Olafur Eliasson, in Berlin and Luca school of arts in Brussels. She has exhibited in Antwerp (Extra City), Basel (Ausstellungsraum Klingental), Berlin (Neue Nationalgalerie), Rome (Villa Massimo), Japan (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo), Leuven (Museum M), Iceland (Reykjavik Art Museum), Berlin (Hamburger Bahnhof), Paris (Cité des Arts) and Mexico (ZonaMaco). She has been awarded grants from the Flemish Ministry of Culture. In 2016 she won the Arte Laguna Prize in the Land-Art Division in Venice, Italy. In 2017 she won the Meesterproef-prize from Team Government Architect Flanders. She was a resident at Thread in Senegal (Josef and Anni Albers Foundation), Casa de Velázquez in Madrid and Atelier Calder in France (Calder Foundation).
Elise Eeraerts is a multidisciplinary artist working with monumental, abstract sculptures concentrating on spatial interventions. In addition, she also creates works representing perceptions of reality through small objects of 2-D media and time-based media works.
Often her work is meant to be a conduit for interrelating human construction and nature. She explores material transformations that originate from the landscape, such as soil becoming a wall, or mud becoming a brick. The process of material manufacture in different time periods and cultures inspire her along with the social impact caused by their creation and process. When deploying and incorporating ancient practices in her work, she suggests a reflection about the nature of our own, current situation, society and lives. In essence, her work explores the past and future of tactile actions of creation and examines our gradual social alienation from ritualistic traditions, along with our idea of being in touch with nature.
Eeraerts’ work deals with perception and questions what we see around us. She uses her own visual language, adapted to specific histories, situations, and spatial contexts. Though often site-specific, and relating to architecture, the geometries that occur in her work, aim to establish a contrast to the standard of objects and spaces, questioning their supposed function.