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Eric van Hove is a Belgian artist born in Algeria who spent most of his youth in Yaoundé (Cameroon).  He studied at the École de Recherche Graphique [ERG] in Brussels and received a Master's degree in Traditional Japanese Calligraphy at the Tokyo Gakugei University, followed by a PhD at the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2008.

Bordering on activism with an existentialist tone, Van Hove's work is based on the artist's nomadic willing to simultaneously address local and global issues. It encompasses many media ranging from installation to performance, video, photography, writing and sculpture. At times insubstantial and subversive, van Hove's interventions often ponder and cross-refer to sociological, political and ecological issues.

His methodology of work includes wanderlust, defamiliarization, psychogeography and dérive, a concept first theorized by French writer and Situationist Guy Debord. Interested in bringing Contemporary Art not only to the public space outside of the institutional confines of the contemporary galleries and museums (as is already done since the 1950s) but outside of the Western context itself, van Hove has been prolific in a great number of diverse places such as the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, Mount Kailash in Tibet, the Laguna de Perlas in Nicaragua, the Issyk Kul lake in eastern Kyrgyzstan, the Fianarantsoa province in Madagascar or more recently the foothills of the Himalayas in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, China. He also conducted artist talks (which he calls “story-telling objects” or “oral exhibits”) in venues as different as Ramallah, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, the Darat al Funun in Amman, and the University of Sarajevo.

- See more at: http://studioart.dartmouth.edu/artists-residence/current-artist-residence#sthash.doaJM4dz.dpuf