Elia Vanderheyden: The disappearance of the birds

Elia Vanderheyden, Untitled #22, 2025, Uitstalling Art Gallery

The scent of tea still lingers in the air when we start our interview with Elia Vanderheyden. Not just any tea, but Dan Cong, through which the artist draws me into his other passion: tea.

At the Blikfabriek in Hoboken, surrounded by sawdust and printing plates, the ritual felt like a quiet preparation for what was to come. Tea as tuning, as a transition from speaking to listening. We were going to talk about his exhibition Where Have the Birds Gone at Uitstalling Art Gallery, but ended up talking about passion and focus, about how art vacillates between what still is and what already seems to have disappeared.

This article was published earlier on Gallery Viewer. You can read the full story here.