Veerle De Smet

WOLF SHEEP

The concept is to place two people in time and situation.

Hans Claus and Livinus De Clerq were prison directors who, for a specific period and time, were assigned a well-defined position with a fixed objective: the prisons in Ghent.

The artist wants to situate this back in time, but from a specific position.

How do they deal with the theme in the work *Wolfschaap*, which symbolizes power, powerlessness, and victimhood?

Livinus De Clerq works from the children's story, while Hans addresses an adult audience with his story.

De Smet wants to provide a clear picture and show a certain side of these individuals that has not been highlighted.

Hilde Van Canneyt

Wolf and Sheep! A true story from 2021!!!

Atmosphere:

Little sheep Lala is walking in the big meadow to find something tasty to fill her empty tummy.

At the edge of the meadow lies the big forest, where many wild animals hide. Oh dear, oh dear!

Story:

Lala suddenly sees wolf Wowo appear at the edge of the forest.

Wowo calls out to Lala and asks how she is doing?

Lala does not come any closer to the wolf. Mama wolf has taught Lala that wolves kill sheep to eat. Be careful!

Wowo asks Lala not to believe all those false rumors: wolves feed on wild rabbits. Not on sweet little sheep, that is the truth.

Atmosphere:

Wolf comes out of the big forest to Lala.

Story:

"Come with me into the forest," says the wolf. "There we can play and there is also something tasty for the sheep, come, come."

Atmosphere:

Together they enter the forest. Lala follows the wolf, but then forces the wolf to go to a place where it is difficult to walk through the marshy ground.

Story:

"You first," says Lala, "I'll come afterwards."

Wowo is still planning to eat Lolo – so tasty, mmm! – and follows Lala's request to go to that marshy spot first.

Atmosphere:

In the middle of that marshy spot, the wolf can no longer move his paws, trapped in the forest by Lala's trick.

Story:

"Help me out of here!" Wowo shouts at Lala. "I'm going to die here!" Lala replies: Of course I will help you, I wouldn't want you to die.

On one condition: that from now on you will let all the little sheep live; they don't like dying either, just like you.

"I will do that," says Wowo, "and I will also tell all the other wolves to let the little sheep live."

Atmosphere:

The little sheep helps the wolf out of the swamp!

Story:
Thank you, says the wolf, I will keep my promise. And all the other wolves ask to do the same: not to eat the little sheep anymore.

Atmosphere:

The little sheep helps the wolf out of the swamp. From now on the two are best friends, what a joy!

26.02.2022

Livinus de Clecrq

Wolf and Sheep

When Marc Dutroux escaped, hundreds of thousands of Belgians protested in the streets of the capital. The silent, white march screamed it out: To prison, all the pedophiles!

When the country's largest prison was being built in complete silence in the north of that city, protesters occupied the construction site for months.

When hunters shot a wolf in Limburg, nature lovers marched in dense crowds behind a placard reading ‘Welcome Wolf’.

When the wolf killed several sheep in Limburg, farmers marched to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The wolf was the favorite animal of the Nazis in Nazi Germany.

Jews and Muslims have been sacrificing sheep since the time of Abraham.

When the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood, the hunter rushed to the rescue and killed the wolf. Then I threw the fairy tale book into the stove. When I wanted to watch TV longer, my mother urged me to go to bed and count sheep.

I saw thousands of soldiers marching when the revolution was celebrated in China and Moscow. I saw thousands of refugees who had been herded together like sheep and lived in camps on the borders of the wealthy West.

It took years before I understood that life was no fairy tale. It took a lifetime before I realized that the wolf was the child of a wolf and the sheep the child of a sheep.

Perhaps I will never understand whose child evil is and whose father good is.

I close the fairy tale book. I listen to the howling of the wolf that lives inside me. I laugh at my bleating about a love that passed.

Now all that remains is the howling of the other and the bleating of my mates.

In the Garden of Eden the wolf dwells with the lamb, it is written. At the end of our lives, something like that seems possible. But by then, our children will say otherwise.

Hans Claus