The context

After organizing for 5 years silent marches in memory of the 2007 assassination of their daughter Annick Van Uystel, her parents and relatives wanted to find a concrete way to celebrate durably her memory.

The patrons wanted a place dedicated to silence, peace and remembrance. Through this, they wanted to question, in all modesty, the violence both near and far.

The commission

Mario Airó proposes an “ever blossoming garden", a protected space, as a conceptual starting point for an artwork evoking the cycles of life. Flower species are selected to bloom the garden throughout the year. The idea of adding a fountain, as a symbol of life, strongly seduced the patrons. Finally, the establishment of a light source keeps the memory of the deceased perceptible even in the night.

The Italian artist Mario Airó has recognized the personal nature of the relatives' demand and the difficulty of transferring, in his work, the heavy feelings that are related to this project. He designed a fragile and sensitive work which is part of a permanent change and which leads us to rethink, over the days and nights, our way of behaving in the face of existence. Art allows here to overcome suffering and to make hope and beauty triumph through an artwork.