Cloaca (art installation)
Cloaca is a series of art installations by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye. The installations are computerised machines that recreate the human digestive process. The machine takes in food which it moves through a series of pipes and containers where digestive processes are performed following which the machine excretes the digested material at a time advertised to gallery viewers. This digested material has both the look and smell of faeces. Each installation has its own name, logo and technical drawings.
Cloaca Professional at the Museum of Old and New Art
Faeces produced by Cloaca
Cloaca N°5 in Charleroi, Belgium
Delvoye feeding Cloaca N°5
Wim Delvoye is a Belgian neo-conceptual artist widely recognized for combining in his inventive and often shocking projects philosophical ideas, innovative use of materials, and a passion for craftsmanship. He blurs the boundaries between traditional art and the digital realm of contemporary artistic practices, creating aerodynamic, mathematically precise, and intricate sculptures that take the art and design to new levels of invention, while offering a perceptive and playful commentary on contemporary society. As the critic Robert Enright wrote in the art magazine Border Crossings, "Delvoye is involved in a way of making art that reorients our understanding of how beauty can be created". Wim Delvoye has an eclectic oeuvre, exposing his interest in a range of themes, from bodily function, and scatology to the function of art in the current market economy, and numerous subjects in between. He lives and works in Ghent (Belgium).
Wim Delvoye
Delvoye's Cloaca is on permanent display at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.