This book questions the why and how of setting up artistic and social practices in interstitial spaces in the city, urban cracks. Urban cracks are conceptualised as in-between time spaces, characterised by an apparent void, where different logics meet and conflict. The lamination of different historically grown layers of meaning and the crossing of conflicting logics in these 'useless' places, are highlighted as significant features which artists and community workers could act upon. The authors discuss the potential of localized artistic and social practices that work with the context of urban cracks, and therefore bring forth significant political meanings. Artists and community workers are both engaged in reading, analysing and translating pertinent developments of society, although their intentions and outcomes are fairly different. This book is the result of a two-year interdisciplinary research project of the University College Ghent: a collaboration between the School of Arts and the Faculty of Education, Health and Social Work
One hundred years after the founding of the École Coloniale Supérieure in Antwerp, the adjacent Middelheim Museum invites Sandrine Colard, researcher and curator, to conceive an exhibition that probes silenced histories of colonialism in a site-specific way. For Colard, the term Congoville encompasses the tangible and intangible urban traces of the colony, not on the African continent but in 21st-century Belgium: a school building, a park, imperial myths, and citizens of African descent. In the exhibition and this adjoining publication, the concept Congoville is the starting point for 15 contemporary artists to address colonial history and ponder its aftereffects as black flâneurs walking through a postcolonial city.
Due to the multitude of perspectives and voices, this book is both a catalogue and a reference work comprised of artistic and academic contributions. Together, the participating artists and invited authors unfold the blueprint of Congoville, an imaginary city that still subconsciously affects us, but also encourages us to envision a decolonial utopia. - Un siècle après la fondation de l'École coloniale supérieure à Anvers, le musée voisin du Middelheim invite la chercheuse et curatrice Sandrine Colard à créer une exposition qui interroge les histoires silencieuses du colonialisme à la lumière du site. Le mot Congoville désigne les traces visibles et invisibles de la colonie, non pas sur le continent africain, mais au cœur de la Belgique actuelle : un bâtiment scolaire, un parc, des mythes impérialistes et des citoyens d'origine africaine. À travers l'exposition et la publication qui l'accompagne, le concept devient pour 15 artistes contemporains prétexte à explorer en tant que « flâneurs » noirs la ville postcoloniale, à questionner le passé colonial et son impact.
Par sa diversité de perspectives et de voix, ce livre est aussi un catalogue et un ouvrage de référence réunissant des articles tant académiques qu'artistiques. Ensemble, les artistes et les auteurs impliqués déplient la carte de Congoville, une ville imaginaire qui nous tient encore sous sa coupe à notre insu, mais nous encourage aussi à imaginer une utopie décoloniale.
Avec des contributions de: Pieter Boons, Sandrine Colard, Filip De Boeck, Bas De Roo, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Sorana Munsya & Léonard Pongo, Herman Van Goethem, Sara Weyns, Nabilla Ait Daoud
Artistes participants: Sammy Baloji, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Maurice Mbikayi, Jean Katambayi, KinAct Collective, Simone Leigh, Hank Willis Thomas, Zahia Rahmani, Ibrahim Mahama, Ângela Ferreira, Kapwani Kiwanga, Sven Augustijnen, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Elisabetta Benassi, Pélagie Gbaguidi
Catalogue d'une exposition à la Fondation A Stichting de Forest, en Belgique, Regards de Femmes propose une relecture de la présence des femmes artistes dans la collection d'Astrid Ullens de Schooten Whettnall. Passionnément impliquée pour sa Fondation A, créée dans un quartier populaire de Bruxelles, la collectionneuse belge consacre toute son énergie à valoriser et aider les artistes. Mettant en avant les artistes femmes de la collection, les dix-neuf artistes choisies ont toutes en commun un engagement au sein de leur communauté avec une volonté de dénoncer, de rompre les codes et de faire bouger les lignes sur la question de la justice sociale, de la féminité, de l'environnement. La perspective se veut également globale incluant des artistes d'Amérique Latine et des figures historiques.00Exhibition: Fondation A Stiching, Bruxelles (24.09-18.12.2022)
"OpTrek in Transvaal. On the role of public art in urban development" reflects on the position of artists in areas of urban transformation and on the concept of urban curating. The articles present a survey of the commissions and research in the field of art and architecture initiated by mobile project office OpTrek in Transvaal between 2002 and 2010. Experts from home and abroad, such as 2012architecten from Rotterdam, the Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata and the Austrian artists' group WochenKlausur were invited to comment on the changes in the district with their work in the built environment. With this publication OpTrek contributes to the international discussion among artists, architects, urban planners, politicians and policy makers on the future development of urban spaces
Piet Mondriaan (1872-1944) was een complexe man. Aan de ene kant eenzelvig en streng in de leer, aan de andere kant dol op dansen en uitgaan. Een man van doordachte en verheven ideeën over de kunst. Iemand die van zijn kunstopvattingen een levensvisie maakte. De man van rood, geel en blauw. Maar ook de man van enkele bijzondere, sferische vrouwenportretten, van verbroken verlovingen en 'eindeloze kussen'. Mondriaan trouwde nooit, maar sloot vriendschap met talloze mooie, intelligente, kunstzinnige en ambitieuze vrouwen in Amsterdam, Parijs, Londen en New York. Kunstenaressen zoals Jacoba van Heemskerck, Marlow Moss en Charmion von Wiegand, en verzamelaars als Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, Ida Bienert en Peggy Guggenheim. Zij boden hem niet alleen vriendschap, maar zijn ook van invloed geweest op de carrière van de schilder. Ze promootten zijn werk, (ver)kochten het en zochten geschikte connecties om zijn afzetgebied uit te breiden. Dit boek werpt een nieuw licht op de vrouwen in het leven van Mondriaan en toont hoe vrouwelijke kunstenaressen en verzamelaars de ontwikkeling van zijn werk, de verspreiding en verkoop ervan en zijn positie in de kunstwereld beïnvloed hebben. Aangetoond wordt hoe de veranderende positie van de vrouw in de kunst een gunstige invloed had op Mondriaans carrière
From 1998 till 2013, a former railwaycanteen on d'Herbouvillekaai in Antwerp that was transformed into a cultural hub by youthful idealists, hoodlums and enthousiasts who called themselves Scheld'apen, was home to an eclectic stream of artists, with over 1300 events occurring in those 15 years, before inevitably being demolished by city expansion plans. All those events produced a flux of visual communication, an enormous flow of printed media that fascinated artists and Scheld?apen aficionados Benny Van den Meulengracht-Vrancx and Bent Vande Sompele. Collecting items and building upon an already existing physical archive, they decided to pour a selection of works into a book: Graphic Design of Scheld?apen.00?Graphic Design of Scheld?apen? is the result of two years of collecting, three archival residencies at Het Bos (the new home of the still existing Scheld?apen organisation) and a short scanning residency at Frans Masereel Centrum. The book contains over 200 graphical works from a variety of different artists, a preface by Pieter Willems and texts by Roel Griffioen and Pia Jacques
Since the Middle Ages artists from the Low Countries were known to be fond of travelling, as Guicciardini in his "Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi" (Antwerp, 1567) and Karel van Mander in his 1604 "Schilderboeck", already noticed. Much more mobile than their colleagues from other European countries, many Netherlandish artists spread all over Europe; a remarkable number among them achieved great fame as court artists, as the careers of Claus Sluter in Burgundy, Anthonis Mor in Spain, Bartholomeus Spranger or Adriaen de Vries in Prague, Giambologna and Jacob Bijlevelt in Florence demonstrate. Moreover, they exerted considerable influence on the artistic production of their time. Nevertheless most of them sank into oblivion soon after they died. Dutch art history neglected them for a long time as they did not fit into the traditional canon of the Low Countries, nor were they adopted by the art histories of their new homelands. This new NKJ volume is an attempt to change this
In this chapter Rosemarie Buikema elaborates on how decolonial feminist artists and scholars are engaged in knowledge production by means of deploying a poetics of recycling as a way to re-orientate themselves towards the relation between the subject and the object of knowledge, matter and form, signifier and signifed. Buikema analyses the work of El Anatsui and Nandipha Mntambo to illustrate the power of this poetics of recycling and gives the example of an exhibition in which the Museum of Equality and Difference (MOED) re-curated the cultural heritage of abolitionism, giving centre stage to the black, previously enslaved woman Sojourner Truth, rather than the white Dutchman Nicolaas Beets. She concludes that the collective fijield of decolonial feminism envelops engaged scholars and artists like a sensitive skin that continuously responds to the context in which it fnds itself.
An exhibition that dismantles the prejudices against "feminine art". The exhibition ? whose title is taken from a book by Marguerite Duras ? highlights the work of 12 female artists nourished by a creative process that tends to tie artistic development to personal experience. The chapters of the exhibition open the comprehension and the gaze one can have on female art. And although there are sometimes feminist works, it is not in the traditional stereotype and combative way or as a revendication, but rather in a more sensitive way. The purpose is to reveal the link that unites art and life in all its complexity and richness.0The key question ?how does art allow to connect our body and our inner world? permits to dismantle the prejudices against "feminine art" as it transcends a gendered approach and doesn?t imprison the creation of women artists.00Exhibition: Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels, Belgium (09.12.2021 - 13.03.2022)
This article is focused on Professor Buikema's intellectual oeuvre and the relation between art and politics as it materialised in MOED (Museum of Equality and Difference). Astrid Kerchman and Rosa Wevers, MOED's former project coordinators, reflect on their collaboration with Buikema through an interview with artist Iris Kensmil on the important role of art in complex social issues relating to emancipation, representation, and resistance. Drawing on the interview with Kensmil and Buikema's Revolts in Cultural Critique (2020), Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken reflects on the meaning of feminist leadership within an institutional context.
Vrouwelijke kunstenaars zijn vaak in de vergetelheid geraakt of in de schaduw gebleven van 'de grote meesters'. Immers, de kunstgeschiedenis is hoofdzakelijk gericht op 'dead white male artists'. Het is nog steeds overduidelijk zijn verhaal (his story) dat de canon van de kunstgeschiedenis bepaalt. Vandaag de dag is er nog steeds geen sprake van gelijkwaardigheid tussen mannelijke en vrouwelijke kunstenaars. Zolang wij uitsluitend de traditionele canon der (kunst)geschiedenis voorgeschoteld krijgen, blijft de geschiedenis er een van helden en overwinnaars, van oorlogen en rooftochten. Ook de mythe van het 'oerpatriarchaat' wordt dan in stand gehouden. In dit boek ontrafelt kunsthistorica Karin Haanappel deze mythe. Zij laat ons een heel andere wereld ervaren, een wereld waarvan ook vrouwen deel uitmaken en waarin niet-westerse en prehistorische culturen eveneens van belang blijken te zijn
Marine painting, paintings of ships and the sea, is a four hundred year old traditional Dutch art discipline. In the nineteenth century the genre had a special artistic prestige and status. This study explores the background, training, studio practice, stylistic development and subject matters of the Dutch nineteenth-century marine painter. A Reference List of Marine Painters, which is a new overview of the true specialists in the genre in this period, is added. The key question is how marine painting was looked at by the marine painters themselves, their fellow painters at the artists associations, in art theory and in art criticism. It turns out that within Dutch art circles throughout the nineteenth century, marine painting was perceived as a bearer of national pride. By placing the genre in a broader cultural-historical context it reveals how marine painting, together with the glorification of maritime history, was embedded in nationalist ideology.
