Writer Merel Bem speaks to Sigefride Bruna Hautman

From 14 February, M will host the first retrospective exhibition of Sigefride Bruna Hautman, an Antwerp-based artist who has been creating a body of work as rich as it is distinctive since the 1980s. One of the exhibited works, a sculpture with a turbulent history, will be donated to M after the exhibition. A report from a studio visit.

It is at the end of the visit that a special reunion takes place. In the basement of Sigefride Bruna Hautman’s studio, a converted coach house in the garden of a spacious 19th-century Antwerp house, two forms wrapped in plastic bags perch on top of two towering wooden sculpting platforms. These are the clay heads for the sculpture ‘Institutionalized Dignity’, a piece featuring a majestic eagle’s head in a frame and two human figures seated on red chairs. A small table separates them, containing two black holes into which they stare, into infinity.

Bruna Hautman (she does not usually go by her first name) made the work in 1982, in the stables of her childhood home. Not long afterwards, she met the Belgian artist and architect René Heyvaert. They agreed to an exchange: one of his artworks for one of hers. Following his death, her sculpture went to France, to Heyvaert’s brother and his partner. Until recently, for all Hautman knew it was still there, stashed in a barn. She was unaware that the part with the two staring figures had been destroyed in a fire. She only found out about this when preparing for her upcoming exhibition at M Leuven.

“I was quite simply shocked,” says the artist. She wears a blue hat and a blue worker’s jacket with deep pockets for those items she doesn’t necessarily want to carry, but nevertheless needs: her glasses, phone and tissues. “You assume that kind of thing is always there.”

She handles the cellophane wrapper with the utmost care, gently removing it from the first of the clay heads. Forty-two years later, she had to recreate her sculpture. The first part, with the eagle’s head, had already been sent to an external studio, where a silicone mould was made, and it was subsequently cast in epoxy. The two standing figures will undergo the same process, but not before Hautman is completely satisfied with the clay versions.

Sigefride Bruna Hautman in haar atelier in Antwerpen — © Marie Dreezen voor M Leuven

She initiates the process by misting the first head with water from a plant sprayer, then proceeds to remove the second head from its plastic bag. “Voilà,” she exclaims, “I’m about to present them to each other.” She rotates the heads so they are face-to-face. This is a significant moment, she thinks to herself. Soon, the two figures will receive new attire, no longer the cowhide that her mother, a skilled artisan, had painstakingly sewn into two matching ensembles in the past (unfortunately, due to the fire). However, ‘Institutionalized Dignity’ will once again be on display in a museum at Hautman’s first retrospective exhibition, showcasing her work from the 1980s to the present day. She will transport the two heads to the studio herself to make sure they don’t get damaged. Her spouse and sounding board, artist Narcisse Tordoir, with whom she has been together for over 50 years, still needs to paint the frame around the eagle. Only then will she be reassured, and the slight nervousness that still lingers will finally disappear.

Kunstenaar Sigefride Bruna Hautman in haar atelier in Antwerpen — © Marie Dreezen voor M Leuven

On the top floor of her own studio, its walls lined with groaning bookcases, she exhibits the model of the museum rooms, containing miniscule versions of the artworks that will be on display at M. The most striking thing is the wide array of techniques that Hautman deploys, and this from the very outset of her career; there are sculptures in all kinds of different materials, video works, and (wax crayon) drawings.

“Technique is important to me,” she says. In the 1970s, she received practical training at Art Secondary School, the preparatory tuition for the art academy in Antwerp, where she would herself go on to teach. Afterwards she studied sculpture at the academy. “But it is not as if I determined to be a sculptor and have only been producing bronze sculptures since then. Everything revolves around the work I want to make; the work itself, and what it means, leads me to the material and the technique. There’s no arguing with it; it simply has to be that way.”

For example, she mentions the portrait of her father. The piece ‘Portrait 1 (Father), (1990)’ is made up of a three-dimensional white wooden bridge, a ship in a bottle and a weather vane. In an old sketchbook, she points to how the idea gradually took shape and evolved. She also shows how her father, who worked at the shipyard in Temse, was represented in a series of sketches depicting various objects she associated with him.

She was inspired by the Metaphysical Painting art movement of the early 20th century, which emphasized the enigmatic nature of everyday objects and to which Giorgio de Chirico, Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carrà belonged. She also looked to Giotto, a Renaissance pioneer and proponent of ‘the magical silence of form and the archaic solidity of objects.’ The soul singer James Brown, who famously uttered, ‘Take ’em to the bridge’, also inspired the design process.

“From Giotto to James Brown,” she laughs. “It’s an eclectic collection of things from all over the place. If that is simply allowed to ripen for long enough, something can suddenly emerge from it all.” Her art continues to be ‘socially engaged’ she says, and is about themes that are relevant today and occupy her thoughts. “But gentle, less and less raw,” she says.

For many visitors to M, her exhibition will be a first introduction to her work. She finds this both exciting and a little strange. She has been an artist all her life, but has never been able to devote herself to her practice full-time. “Of course I would like to have done that, but it was financially impossible,” she says. In light of this, it’s crucial that you stay focused on the path you’ve chosen and avoid looking back. I’ve always enjoyed teaching, and I’m happy that I am now fully engaged with that work again.”

The heads still need finishing. Following the conclusion of the exhibition, Bruna Hautman plans to gift ‘Institutionalized Dignity’ to the museum. She smiles: “Then I’ll be happy to know that it’s in a safe place. I don’t think anything bad will happen to it.”

Merel Bem,

Writer and Art Journalist