Ma Machine d´Emotions is the story of a man wrestling with how to express his emotions who then builds a gigantic, unbelievably complex machine in which he conceals a special emotion that only she for whom it is intended will be able to discover: a secret message meant for one particular person hidden amidst the organised chaos of 523 different emotions.

The story centres on a gigantic man figure depicted kneeling on a wooden chair, who clasps an enormous humming top in his claws, on which the 523 emotions are classified according to a complex order of prime numbers, categories, colours, symbols, languages and texts. Detailed pen drawings depict the machine and the man and the individual emotions and their interconnections.

The start of this fantastic tale is summed up in an initial series of 43 pen drawings, on view at Café Zondag on Wyckerbrugstraat in Maastricht through 3 August 2021. The story will then further unfold during an exhibition world tour through Resana (IT), Cascais (PT), Barcelona (ES), Lyon (FR), San Diego (US), Hawaii (US) and New York (US), among other locations.

Along the way, the travelling story will also be documented in a self-writing novel. The world tour is at the same time a quest for the ideal city in which to build the 23-metre-high machine, where it can spit out its emotions.

About the artist

The Belgian artist Jan Samyn (Kortrijk, West Flanders) is a pre-eminent storyteller. He is constantly writing, reading, drawing and coming up with new ideas. As he writes, he sketches imaginary machines based on a labyrinthine order of words, images, symbols and colours. It is in that complexity that he prefers to hide, as an eternal nomad, restlessly on a quest. Samyn has kept his studio in Maastricht since 2013, which also serves as the starting point for the world tour of his project Ma Machine d´Emotions.