The Billboard

Project Billboard was one of highest secrecy, as is the fashion of it’s creator. We hadn’t been given the simplest hint of what was arriving in our cafe until it was there, looming, bright and in your face, unavoidable. I’d suspected something big would be installed when I’d passed by one evening to see a group of beautiful young men helping our artist to unload an eight foot long flat object out of a van around midnight. Contemplating over an espresso I’d thought of our artist’s talent for persuasion, always able to get good looking people to do hard labour for him. He is ‘our artist’ because he is the king of the artists at our workplace, the one we flock to for advice on our art and on everything else. No one had been quite prepared for such a dramatic vision that had appeared overnight. Our artist had installed a 5 metre tall billboard with lighting fixture inside our cafe. No longer was the cafe cosily lit, the glare of the billboard’s fluorescent light overshadowed every customer and cappuccino. We watched amused as our regular customers had to edge their way around the beast to make it to their tables or whilst posh ladies sipped cava beneath it. The posters hung advertised brand new movies with cliched concepts featuring colleagues and customers as the stars. Surprisingly one day Christine was one such star. On a normal day Christine is to be found dosing on the back sofa of our cafe with trusty husband William, both easily overlooked. But today Christine is in her own movie, her picture larger than life for all to see, a woman with a story, an actress in an award winning motion picture. She entered the cafe two days after the installation of her poster, saw herself in her new role, smiled at our artist and said ‘das schoon’.

‘The Billboard’ by Egon Van Herreweghe to be seen at Sphinx Cafe, Ghent until 4/11.

Bio

The fatal flower is the perverted shy girl, the one you wouldn’t suspect. Under a soft exterior lies a complex being with an unyielding wildness, anchored to the earth by her humble nature and inexplicable dry humour. She is the femme of now, the modern woman who’s thoughts transcend through cultures and time.

Over the coming months let ‘La Fleur Fatale’ be your guide to the hidden insights and stories of a watchful woman’s eye navigating through the ‘European’ way of life. Struggles and mishaps ensue as life is embraced and the thorny introvert femme clammers for life’s answers. All possible subjects are covered from death to Kim Kardashian and from sisterhood to the perfect strawberry frappe.

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