Love that Moves the Sun

In her practice, Belgian filmmaker and artist Anouk De Clercq invites viewers into contemplative spaces, blurring the boundaries between the physical and the virtual, the visible and the imaginary. With her new film installation Love that Moves the Sun, she leads us into a vast forest landscape. Inspired by one of the last and best-preserved primeval forests, located on the border between Poland and Belarus, De Clercq creates a world where darkness unfolds in many shades. It is a haunted but wondrous place: stars drift slowly, meteor showers blaze across the sky, fireflies dance, and animals gather to sing up the sun.

The forest becomes both witness and protagonist, observing all that passes through it while telling its own story. It speaks in its own tones: the rich, layered soundscape, composed by Vessel, draws a clear contrast between the intimate sounds of the forest and something more distant, emerging from beyond. Holding both beauty and unease, the work is a meditation on a world without us — an animated panorama in which light, time and nature are given space to thrive. The camera and the sun move in synchrony, tracing a cyclical rhythm that evokes an eternal order - larger than ourselves, yet reassuring in its repetition.

At the heart of the work lies an invisible force, an energy that propels everything forward, even the sun itself. It is a poem of hope: immersive, intoxicating, and alive with the sense that everything remains in motion. Love that Moves the Sun is an invitation to find a home within that movement.

As I tried to sleep that night, I heard two owls
hooting to each other in a call and response. I fell
asleep with a burning desire to understand them.
I felt I was suspended in that fleeting moment
between night and day, between the animals of the
dark and those who emerge with the light.

- Leticia Urieta

Curator: Karen Verschooren