Brussels (AFP)

"This was not the time for trash stuff": The Belgian designer Philippe Geluck, creator of the "Chat", admits having put limits on his humor during the coronavirus pandemic, and opted for "positive messages" by thinking to the sick.

Forced to postpone for one year an exhibition of monumental cats which was planned for the spring on the avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris, the artist says that he took advantage of the confinement to tidy up his Brussels studio from top to bottom.

He also hopes that this period will have made it possible to "think differently" and to envisage a world without "excessive production" or "hyper consumption".

A: "I am very lucky, I work in a magnificent workshop (a ground floor at the back of the courtyard, spacious and bright with canopies, editor's note) and I live three floors above. was not stuck, I was able to go back and forth. And I even managed to attract my wife to the workshop to tidy up, to make order. You can not imagine what I could accumulate here in 15 years, everything was stashed in cupboards, I classified everything and I found documents that will be very welcome for the future Cat museum (planned in Brussels at the earliest in 2023). useful".

A: "Those who know my background know that I like trash, disturbing, incisive humor. They know that this type of humor is also part of me. There I did not want to be clever at all with gore stuff. I could have, monstrous ideas came to my mind, but I stopped drawing them because I did not want people who suffered from this crisis to take a blow of the club while reading my drawings.

I have obliged myself to treat the subject in a fraternal manner, friendly to the victims. I had to convey positive messages even if I denounced certain things (the Chat was in particular in solidarity with the poorly paid caregivers or castigated the violence done to women, note). Yes, I am self-censored but in a voluntary manner ".

A: "I've always heard that the economy is life, to live well is to consume, even to destroy the planet in the air ... Basically, it was not possible to slow down this race to excessive production and hyper consumption. Now, we had proof that it was perfectly possible to stop!

We must realize that we are going into the wall with the current system ... The pandemic was a kind of wall which forced us to mark the stop before we take the real big wall. There are different ways to cross this wall; we can smash it, pass in force and continue to restart as before. But we can also think about the 50 times bigger wall behind it. "

A: "We must take advantage of this moment to reinvent a fairer, less polluting world. We have the means to do it! The world can continue to turn without there being thousands of planes flying in all directions all Inventing part of the teleworking work to limit travel in a car is possible! We were deprived of consumer goods for two and a half months and we did not die. In fact, what Greta Thunberg and I called for our wishes came true with a snap of the fingers (big smile) ".

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