I am featured with a short interview in the Marie Claire, read it here (in Dutch) (below the pictures English translation).
Woman to watch: Marieke De Munck
By Hannah Gellens
With our Woman to Watch section, we regularly put a woman in the spotlight. They are women who inspire, encourage and motivate other women in their free time or at work. This time it's Marieke De Munck's turn.
Marieke De Munck
45 years
Lives in Ghent, Belgium.
Marieke de Munck is a curator at Arts Center Vooruit in Ghent. There she is also responsible for Groene Vooruit, the 'future' team that is putting sustainability on the map. For example, she contributed to the decision to make this Ghent cultural gem an ambassador of the EU Climate Pact that aims for a climate neutral Europe by 2050.
Education: Marieke De Munck obtained her title as Master in the Visual Arts at LUCA & KASK School of Arts Ghent. But she was looking for more knowledge and development and chose to do an additional Master's degree in Performance Arts & Media Studies at Ghent University.
Career: Marieke De Munck is a visual artist. She herself describes her drawings and collages as 'engaged'. Not in the radical, grotesque sense of the word, but more in a gentle, human scale. She gets inspired by the condition humaine, stories, emotions, and the environment we live in. In addition to being a visual artist, Marieke De Munck is also working as a curator at Kunstencentrum Vooruit, as mentioned earlier. She puts interesting art and culture in the spotlight in all kinds of forms: from festivals and theater to debates and collective actions.
Motto: “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think” – Winnie the Pooh
Her strength: super-connector, many ideas, great enthusiasm, and a small corner off
Why a power woman?
Marieke De Munck is a woman with an opinion, someone you can always turn to for a good chat about the big questions of life. In addition, she is also a busy bee who expresses herself creatively in her visual work and for Vooruit. But growing up on the edge of a forest, there is one theme that Marieke cannot let go of: ecology. She, therefore, did not hesitate for a moment when the proposal came that Vooruit would become an ambassador for the EU climate pact.
“Based on my personal ambitions and due to the job I am in, I was preparing an action plan for sustainability at the Vooruit Arts Center. When we then got the chance to become ambassadors of the EU Climate Pact, I didn't hesitate for a moment. Everyone should do as much as possible what they can do for the climate. Every little bit helps.”
“I consider myself radical in thought, but pragmatic in action. For example, I would never chain myself to a tree for days for the climate. But I think it's fantastic that there are others who are so radical and just do it. In my opinion, radicality must coexist with pragmatics in order to get the masses on board. We need radical ideas to imagine where we want to go. But that radicality is often not feasible for a large group of people, but pragmatic (intermediate) solutions are. I used to be quite radical myself, but with age, I learned to work more pragmatically.”
When Marieke is asked what the solution could be for the climate problem, she invariably answers collectivity. “Everyone can help in his/her/their way to make the boat change direction. We must therefore continue to meet, maintain social contact and really work together. Because that is where the desire and activism to jointly do things, and do them differently, arise.”
“As a 94-year-old, I would like to sit next to an old oak tree and see that people and all life on the planet are doing well. See that together, as humanity, we have succeeded in creating a socio-economically just society with respect for the large ecosystem of which we ourselves are a part. That we have come to a point where I can die with peace of mind.”