We Once Were One is the title of a wooden sculpture created especially for the context of Kunsthal Gent. Between November 2021 and September 2022, Dutch artist Femmy Otten slowly transformed a lime tree stump into the body of a woman. "The tree is a woman, formed by rings. One every year," she tells us. The hair falls over her face like tears. On her chest, Otten depicts venal lips, which feel like a protective cloak. The opening of the cloak spreads all over her belly. "Because we were once one."

In 2002, Otten first made a portrait of Aline, a woman she was working with in a theatre at the time. 20 years later, she sought her out again and Aline was the model for this sculpture.

Femmy Otten interprets the body as a source of knowledge, rather than a spectacle or object of reflection or desire. Her work focuses on inventing rituals, which are always there, even if they are not explicitly represented. For Femmy Otten, the starting points for this sculpture - whether they lie in Greek sculpture, the Hindu and Buddhist pantheons of Cambodia's Angkor Wat, or pre-Raphaelite sculpture - are deeply related to religion and mysticism.

That is precisely why she made this sculpture for this location, a monastery church of the Discalced Carmelites. A medieval male stronghold into which she brings an erotic female energy. "Aline was always there, in this church, in this place," she says. Now that Femmy Otten gave her a body of lime wood, she can finally claim her place.