The heart as a fading archive of colour.
Cor Chromaticum is a large-scale ceramic installation inspired by the impermanence of colour in ancient sculpture. The work was created for De Oudheid in kleur at the Gallo-Romeins Museum in Tongeren, an exhibition that presented vivid reconstructions of classical statues based on archaeological pigment research.
In this work, the human heart becomes a symbolic core: intensely coloured, radiating outward into ever-paler tones. The vivid centre gradually dissolves into a surrounding mass of whiteness. This fading of colour represents both loss and memory — the passage of time, and what remains just beneath the surface.
The installation invites viewers to reflect on the emotional weight of colour and material. It draws a line between the fragility of history and the persistence of form; between what was once vividly alive, and what now lingers in silence.
