/members-avk/verhoeven
In his installations and performances, visual artist/theatre maker Dries Verhoeven questions our relationship to that which is unusual, uncomfortable, or repulsive.
He often invites the public to become part of his work. One example is when he used the dating app Grindr to invite people to his installation Wanna play? He sought contact with men not to have sex but to explore other forms of intimacy in front of an audience. His installation Happiness attracted a lot of attention; it depicted a robot in a clandestine pharmacy explaining drugs, painkillers and antidepressants but also raising raised questions about the social engineering of happiness, comparing its own post-human appearance to substance abuse.
Verhoeven's work has been exhibited at many festivals abroad, including the Wiener Festwochen in Vienna, LIFT in London and the Festival Transamérique in Montreal. He has won numerous awards, such as the Mont Blanc Young Directors Award at the Salzburg Festival and the prize for 'Best International Performance' at the Fadjr International Theatre Festival in Tehran for his installation Guilty Landscapes.