Jon Barron (c.c.)
Jon Barron is part of the Chocolade Collectief together with David Colorfield and Bentley Verdoodt. With their combined efforts, they seek to reconsider their position in the contemporary art scene.
In the subtle uplift of the landscape, their installation brings about a kind of disturbance—perhaps drawing increased attention to the surroundings. The spheres set you in motion and adjust your expectations.
Simultaneously, the work explores the common ground between the practices of Nora De Decker and Bjorn Pauwels. Both operate from spatial form in their individual practices, but each approaches it from a different standpoint.
This collaboration takes tentative steps under the name Jon Barron—an anagram of Nora and Bjorn—and together with Bentley Verdoodt and David Colorfield, Jon Barron is part of the Chocolade Collectief.​
LOCATION / ARTWORKS:
5. GOET TE BREUCK
Five slightly similar ideas, 2025
A series of large pink inflated balls
Micha Baudenelle
1972 (BE)
Micha Baudenelle was born and raised in ’t Kiel in Antwerp, where his passion for art was awakened at an early age. It was the works of Fred Bervoets that opened his eyes to the art world. Since then, Bervoets’ influence has been a constant source of inspiration and the reason why he began considering using art as a language.
Baudenelle: “Art is a means to tell stories to myself, without the necessity for others to understand them. My works are personal dialogues, born from an inner drive to find deeper meaning. I discovered this same feeling of expression in music. From the age of fifteen, I organized music festivals together with my brother, featuring international psychobilly and punk bands. This period strongly shaped my creative vision and taught me to embrace different forms of expression.”
Baudenelle draws inspiration from everything: from old masters to contemporary artists, from figurative to abstract. While humor sometimes shines through in his work, they tend to reveal the darker sides of humanity. This is not a conscious message, but rather a reflection of his perception. The creative process helps him to balance the tension between his inner and outer world.
As an artist, Baudenelle not only wants to explore his own inner world but also to make others think. He certainly does not wish to give answers, but rather to raise questions and stir up real, deep emotions.
In the diptych The wealth’s shackled burden, for the artist, it is about people who do not feel at home in our society or who cannot understand how humans treat one another because of wealth, power, or the fear of losing these. It is about the powerlessness some individuals experience in our Western society. Some perceive our “free Western world” as a dictatorship of wealth. The burning of money stands as a symbol of protest against this idea. It is not so much about a political or economic ideology or statement, but rather about showing the way people think, and the frustration of some in realizing that they themselves are also guilty of it.
The character in the extravagant fish shop in A Fish Among Us is in reality a homeless man from his neighborhood, whom Micha Baudenelle used as a model. “This painting serves to remind myself that life should be about more than consumption. Again, it is not about protest or trying to change someone’s mind. My paintings serve only to make myself aware of what is happening around me and to never take anything for granted.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS:
8. WAFFELAERT
The wealth’s shackled burden, 2023
Oil paint on canvas, mixed media, aluminum frame
A Fish Among Us, 2023
Oil paint on canvas, mixed media, aluminum frame
Ruben Bellinkx
1975 (BE)
In his films, drawings, installations, and scale models, Ruben Bellinckx constructs situations for curious encounters between living beings and inanimate elements of vastly different kinds.
Fascinated by the blurring of boundaries, he stages performances that press against the limits of the impossible. His works immerse viewers in uncanny situations that are at once surprising, meaningful, and often charged with a quiet sense of existential drama. In doing so, Bellinckx reveals imbalances and exposes the mechanisms of conditioning and domestication.
In the front garden of the Goet Te Breuck location, two areas of ground slowly open and close, as if breathing. Air cushions, electronically controlled fans, and a compressor set the earth in gentle motion. With The City Garden, Bellinckx orchestrates a controlled, artificial natural phenomenon. The effect is twofold: it offers a calming, almost meditative experience, yet it also prompts reflection on our relationship with the planet — a planet increasingly destabilised and striking back at human society with growing force.
Today, our perception of nature is so shaped by human intervention and technology that the line between the natural and the artificial is steadily eroding. By allowing the earth itself to breathe, Bellinckx invites us to pause, to notice, and to reconsider how we inhabit this fragile terrain.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS:
8. WAFFELAERT
The City Garden, 2002
In-situ installation, two rubber air cushions, two electronically controlled valves and air compressor
Hopstreet Gallery
Guillaume Bijl
1972 (BE)
Guillaume Bijl is a self-taught artist. He trained in theatre and went on to work as a set builder and painter. From the late 1970s onwards, he left painting behind and began creating tragicomic installations, sculptures, and compositions, inspired by the banality of our consumer society.
By presenting fully realised shops, gyms, dog-grooming salons, tourist attractions — and more — as art installations, Bijl confronts viewers with the structures and institutions that shape our world and our sense of identity. His aim was to expose the blind acceptance of suggested realities by consumers, citizens, tourists, and even art lovers, amplifying the artificiality of everyday situations. In doing so, he distorts the expected boundary between art and life.
In his compositions, Bijl assembled found kitsch and inexpensive objects, presenting them as though they were relics of our time — preserved for the future as priceless treasures. In this way, he underscores the absurd attachment people often feel toward material possessions. By combining unabashed critique with a generous dose of humour, he serves the viewer a helping of Guillaume Bijl that is difficult to ignore.
The work SORRY, on view at Café Maurice, is one of the latest pieces in his SORRY’s series, in which the artist allowed himself greater freedom from the realism that has long defined his practice. Slightly more absurd, slightly more humorous than the world around us, it playfully stretches reality just far enough to make us question it.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS:
24. CAFÉ MAURICE
Sorry, 2025
Mixed media, Keteleer Gallery
Mouad El Bissaou
1996 (MA)
Mouad El Bissaoui is a conceptual, multidisciplinary artist and a laureate of the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tétouan. With a touch of sarcasm, he reflects on contemporary political games and challenges, as well as on techniques of manipulation in political, economic, and social spheres.
Working across a wide range of techniques — from drawing to installation to performance — El Bissaoui deconstructs dominant languages and narratives that harm the individual, flattening and homogenising stories. Inspired by Arabic poetry, whose composition and eloquence he greatly admires, he also integrates language into his art.
“I began exploring the possibilities of charcoal during a project in which I examined the symbolic relationship between the game of chess and political violence. On a pawn, I depicted the traces of real violence, suggesting the dialectic between play and seriousness in political action from which violence emerges. That is where my practice with charcoal began: a process that starts with carving wooden chess pieces, which are then charred until they become masses of carbon resembling pawns.”
The series of drawings Union des colonnes, on view at the Hoekwinkel location, is remarkable not only for its technical mastery but also for its poetic approach to themes such as disappearance, memory, and transformation. The individual drawings of decorative columns are connected by fencing and barbed wire, yet they also raise the question of who is truly behind the barrier — the viewer or the prisoner? The artist often draws inspiration from Moroccan poetry, translating the imagery it evokes into reflections on pressing social and political issues.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
3. HOEKWINKEL
Union de colonnes, 2024
Series of four charcoal drawings​
Dirk Braeckman
1958 (BE)
Dirk Braeckman is an artist who, through his hushed and enigmatic black-and-white photography, continually questions and redefines the photographic medium. For him, it is not the moment of capture that takes precedence, but the entire process — from image manipulation to the final work. In doing so, he expands the medium of photography with a painterly approach, placing the act of image processing at the very heart of his practice.
ECHTZEIT #123-24, on view at the Hoekwinkel location, originates from his recent research into the photographic archive of the FotoMuseum (FOMU) in Antwerp. Existing images from the museum’s collection were re-photographed, reworked, and reinterpreted through his distinctive visual language. The appropriation of images has long been part of Braeckman’s oeuvre, but it has taken on new meaning through this exploration of the museum’s photographic archive. The result is an intriguing, layered work that invites slowness, careful observation, and the embrace of ambiguity.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
3. HOEKWINKEL
ECHTZEIT#123-24, 2024
Ultrachrome inkjet print on aluminium in a stainless steel frame,
Tim van Laere Gallery
Jake & Dinos Chapman
1966 / 1962 (VK)
The British brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman gained international attention in 2008 when they purchased thirteen watercolours and drawings by Adolf Hitler — and then reworked them with rainbows and stars. They titled the resulting Gesamtkunstwerk If Hitler Had Been A Hippy How Happy Would We Be. Since then, they have been known as the “enfants terribles” of the British art scene, deliberately testing the limits of what can — and cannot — be shown. Their works are often seen as shocking or provocative, with frequent references to mutilation and pornography.
The grinning emoji on their flag World peace through world domination greets visitors as if to announce that there will be plenty to laugh about along the way. “When people talk about our work, they sometimes forget that it’s 99% funny and 1% something else. The most obvious thing about it is that it’s funny — and what’s funny about it is that people want to take it seriously,” they say themselves. And yet, they also note: “The idea of making hopeful, friendly art is total nonsense, because in general, the world is a terrible place.”
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
1. KERKPLEIN
World peace through world domination
textile banner​
Dominiek Colpaert
1983 (BE)
Dominiek Colpaert paints, creates graphic work, and builds installations — all of which come together in his own small ‘Factory’, which he wryly and self-deprecatingly calls Topstudio’s.
Colpaert’s paintings depict constructed scenes that balance between the familiar and the uncanny. In compact formats and a restrained visual language, he portrays deserted environments, architectural interventions, and objects with symbolic or nostalgic resonance. Using acrylic paint on panel and a controlled painting style, his works take on an almost model-like quality, where fictional landscapes and everyday elements converge in a quiet, timeless atmosphere.
His style, like the landscapes he depicts, is understated yet precise, with houses often taking centre stage and reality gently called into question. Colpaert seeks to escape the banal precisely by elevating the everyday into art. His work carries a delightful paradox of melancholy and humour, complemented in the installation at the Brucqstraat–Kooigemstraat location by geraniums on the windowsill. With poetic playfulness, Dominiek Colpaert imagines the desire to transcend the everyday by sketching a surreal world in which the ordinary is magnified and transformed.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
13. BRUCQSTRAAT-KOOIGEMSTRAAT
Een kleine kans op een groot succes, 2025
10 different paintings, acrylic on panels:
De zwarte rotsen, 2019
‘t Vuyl Hemde, 2019
Nooit gedacht, 2024
Boven de grijze wolken, 2025
Een kortstondig moment van exponentiële groei, 2025
Hier heeft de mens gewonnen, 2025
Rustigheidstraat, 2025
Déjà vu, 2025
(nog) zonder titel, 2025
Lunapark ‘Arcadia, 2024
Ilke Cop
1988 (BE)
Ilke Cop aligns herself with a contemporary figurative tendency in which the female body is no longer depicted through the gaze of the other, but claims space within its own narrative. Through her paintings, she raises questions about representation, image-making, and the position of the female artist within art history. “Activism is also an important pillar of my practice. As a member of Hyster-x, a Belgian feminist collective for female and non-binary makers, I find it essential to create alternative spaces where we can change certain structures from within. Women and marginalised groups have, throughout history, proven how persistence and the strength of ideas can change the world.”
Two oil paintings from the series Hardcore/Softspore are on view at the Goet Te Breuck location. In this series, she reinterprets the ‘Genesis’ narrative: where traditionally a male god imposes order on chaos, she positions herself as a female creator, imagining a multiple, alternative reality.
The mushroom serves here as both visual and conceptual motif — a symbol of connection and resilience. Fungi offer a way to span the entire globe in a surprising and inscrutable network, acting as a lifeline for life on Earth.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
15. GOET TE BREUCK
Hardspore II, 2024
Oil plainting on canvas,
Tatjana Pieters Gallery
Hardspore IX, 2024
Oil painting on canvas,
Tatjana Pieters Gallery
Leo Copers
1947 (BE)
Since the early 1970s, Leo Copers has been building an extensive and enchanting oeuvre encompassing sculptures, installations, paintings, and drawings. Initially pioneering as a conceptual explorer, he soon evolved into an exceptionally original creator of object-based installations, using an unlimited range of materials to forge surreal and disorienting associations.
His works are often both provocative and poetic, yet as an artist, he maintains a certain distance. His presence is palpable, but it is never entirely clear how he positions himself in relation to the subject. He juggles ideas and established systems of symbols, seducing the viewer with his visual sleight of hand, only to leave them disoriented — and smiling — through his use of oppositions, deconstruction, and artificial tensions.
Themes of danger, destruction, and impermanence recur throughout his work, approached in a dualistic manner: dramatic stagings are rendered with poetic nuance. To achieve this, Copers uses everyday objects, which he alters, isolates, or recontextualises. His compositions are built with strategic irony; the objects are chosen for the specific expectations they carry, expectations he promptly undermines by introducing the smallest shifts in context.
While his material choices may suggest danger, the resulting images are estranging yet romantic. The sense of threat and tension returns again and again, though always framed in an aesthetic manner. This tension is heightened by the interplay between elements, as the artist explores natural forces such as water, light, and fire, striving for a balance between them.
Copers trained as a visual artist at Sint Lucas College of Art and at the Academy of Fine Arts in his native Ghent. In 1967, he co-founded the Nieuwe Rococco group.
In 2002, he first presented his VIPAG — Vrijwillige Individuele Publieke Automatische Gevangenis (Voluntary Individual Public Automatic Prison) — a barred cage designed to be placed in public spaces. Visitors could enter the cell, lock the gate behind them, and quite literally sentence themselves.
The Verplaatsbare Individuele Publieke Automatische Gevangenis, shown here at Café de France, functions like a modern-day pillory. Measuring 80×80 centimetres and standing two metres tall, it allows you — for the price of a coin — to lock yourself in for several minutes. Declare yourself guilty before your fellow humans, and serve your sentence. Penance has never been so amusing.
His second work, roggbiv, on view at Sint-Denijsplaats, uses the colours of the rainbow to create white light — the very light needed to see at all. From “roggbiv” to “lgbtq+” runs a chain of mnemonic steps, moving toward knowledge, discovery, and exploration — both near and far, past and present. At Café Maurice, several drawings and sketches are also on display, showing his 1968 idea for a Regenboog zebrapad (“Rainbow Crosswalk”), rendered in ballpoint and coloured pencil on graph paper, or in ink, adhesive letters, and coloured pencil on paper.
“Every day a new idea.” With this statement, Copers distanced himself from his conceptual contemporaries in the late 1960s. Unlike many conceptual artists, he does not stop at the formulation of an idea; for him, the material realisation of a work is just as essential. He is renowned for his critical — and often ironic — commentary on both the art world and the world at large.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
24. CAFÉ MAURICE
Remake van de straat, 1968 (68/1)
Ink, adhesive letters, coloured pencil on paper
Keteleer Gallery
Regenboog zebrapad, 1968 (68/4)
Ballpoint pen and coloured pencil on graph paper
Keteleer Gallery​
Ronny Delrue
1957 (BE)
Ronny Delrue keeps a drawing diary that serves as the foundation for his creations. Drawings are the basis of his images. For Delrue, a portrait is a landscape and a landscape is a portrait — both concealing as much as they reveal. A work may begin with an anecdote or a pencil mark, but it evolves into something universal: an image that feels familiar yet is unlike any other. The artist often critiques what he calls the “pollution” of our minds, which clouds our thinking. Hence the heads enclosed in balloons, or bodies wrapped in barbed wire.
The installation Casa del tempo, at the Huisje Spiereweg location, nestles seamlessly into the house in the middle of the village centre. It has stood there for years, locked away, and now opens its doors: the path leading to the front door, laid with large flat stones, the building’s former living space, and its garden all create a tension between appearance and disappearance. In the ground-floor rooms, oil paintings from the Blood on the hands series reference the darker realities of war zones. We hear the ticking of the clock No more hours, but eternity, yet see no hands or markings of time. We encounter echoes of a former parlour — the “best room”, meant to be admired but rarely entered — in the red carpeted floor and the red lampshade. Now, the visitor walks freely through this once-private space, though its cosy atmosphere carries a sharp edge.
The clock originated from the moment the artist last saw his mother after her passing, when a farewell text was read aloud containing the words: “for you there are no more hours, only eternity.” The cabinet Lost memories is likewise filled with absences: its painted panes vanish into the pitch-black interior of the furniture — Après un temps il n’y plus de souvenirs. A worn little table has been refreshed with a bright white cloth, embroidered in red cross-stitch with the artist’s own years of life. Through the view from inside to outside, the bronze bust Fading memory stares ahead, “to their chairman”. On the narrow road outside lies an inconspicuous stone that has been there for years — now marked with the chiseled words, filled in with red paint: Was, Is, Will be.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
22. HUISJE SPIEREWEG
Casa del tempo SDC, 2025
Installatie
Bram Demunter
1993 (BE)
Bram Demunter is a painter who studied in Ghent, at Sint-Lucas and the HISK. He lives in Kortrijk. His work is about us — humanity — and the place we occupy in the world: the mythologies we create around ourselves, the stories and visual cultures that emerge from us, and the changes we bring about in nature and in our worldview.
Delving into history, Demunter unearths forgotten threads and weaves new connections. Obscure tales, lost symbols, Christian iconography, myths and legends, as well as contemporary events and literary anecdotes, are unexpectedly intertwined in his paintings.
He does not merely look back at the past — he binds it to the present and to his own surroundings. Through this synthesis of past and present, Demunter arrives at a wholly personal visual language: one that resonates with artists such as Rogier van der Weyden and the Flemish Primitives, but also with figures like Matthew Paris and James Ensor. From these influences, he has built a universe entirely his own, where stories from his investigations, collections, and fascinations gain new meaning.
His painting Val der Verdoemden, on view in the Sint-Dionysius & Sint-Genesius Church, reflects on humanity’s place in the world, the myths we construct, and the images and narratives we generate — as well as the transformations we impose on nature and perception. Working in oil, he covers the canvas with an almost obsessive density, a horror vacui that probes not only our fear of emptiness, but also the layers of history. In doing so, he forges new links between obscure stories, forgotten symbols, Christian iconography, myths, legends, contemporary events, and literary fragments at the margins of memory.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
2. SINT-DIONYSIUS & SINT- GENESIUSKERK
Val der Verdoemden, 2015
Oil on canvas in black frame
Tim van Laere Gallery
Stefaan Dheedene
1975 (BE)
Stefaan Dheedene lives and works in Ghent as a conceptual artist and guest professor at KASK Ghent.
His practice revolves around the functional. He creates unassuming objects, producing mainly — though not exclusively — sculptures and installations. His work reveals a distinct interest in the aesthetic and political relationships between images, forms, objects, and their crafted qualities.
At the heart of his approach lies the intimate relationship between similarity and difference. Many works emerge from repeating or reordering highly recognisable images and objects. While these objects remain concrete and familiar, Dheedene’s careful reordering lends them a kind of bodily and visual autonomy. Each piece is created in isolation, but together — in the form of an exhibition — they form an organised apparatus, a deliberate arrangement.
In SUN SET, presented at Goet Te Breuck, a steel beam, a pedestal, a trestle, and a profile spotlight are brought together in a precarious balance to construct a sunset. Where we usually witness this atmospheric phenomenon only at the horizon at dusk, here the artist offers an installation that allows us to experience twilight at any time of day. More than serving a structural necessity, the work draws attention to the artificial methodology of display. In this sense, it follows the poetics of Stéphane Mallarmé. As Jacques Rancière wrote of Mallarmé’s poems: “Each poem is a layout that abstracts a basic schema from the spectacle of nature… always schemas of appearance and disappearance, presence and absence, unfolding and folding back.”
The video work CRYSTAL, shown at Brucqstraat–Kooigemstraat, features Cyrille Nkoa rehearsing the Latin aria Agnus Dei, composed by Georges Bizet, on Mount Febé near Yaoundé, Cameroon. Febé is a well-known mountain ridge between the Mbankolo and Bastos districts, overlooking the affluent part of Yaoundé. In Ewondo, the local language, ‘Febé’ means ‘wind’, named for the constant breeze that sweeps the slopes.
In this lush, jungle setting, the Black singer performs a prayer sung during Christian mass as the priest breaks the holy bread: “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.” The work inevitably evokes the complex and often troubling history of Christian missions in Africa — not least the Swiss Benedictine monastery that now houses monks on Mont Febé.
Dheedene’s practice explores the delicate interplay between likeness and difference, reordering recognisable images, sounds, and people. Here, he constructs a postcolonial image in which Nkoa takes up the confession of guilt, internalises it, and sends it back. Though it has the appearance of documentary footage, the scene is in fact rehearsed and staged.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
15. GOET TE BREUCK
SUN SET, 2012
Steel, wood, enamel paint, profile spotlight, tripod
​
16. BRUCQSTRAAT-KOOIGEMSTRAAT
CRYSTAL, 2002
Video-installation
Marijn Dionys
(BE)
Dionys is an artist and designer, trained in interior and furniture design at Thomas More University of Applied Sciences in Mechelen. He works with simple, commonplace construction materials such as brick, wood, and concrete to create installations. His works often reference architecture and the built environment of Flanders and Belgium through recognisable miniature elements. These miniatures — whether adapted from model kits or crafted from scratch — can be seen as a way of making the world more comprehensible, of reducing it to a manageable scale.
The work Wachtgevel (Waiting Façade), presented at Hoeve De Rode Poort, consists of a heavy concrete block suspended above a small model of an old Flemish terraced house with two blind walls. The floating concrete block, by its form, hints at the shape of a building, though this is never entirely clear. It could suggest a hopeful future — building upwards so that the old house survives — or it could be read as the looming threat of a weight about to crush it.
In Straatstenen (Street Bricks), shown at Waffelaert, five sets of thirteen old bricks are arranged in the familiar Flemish half-brick pattern. Here, the layout also evokes the structure of a city plan: the bricks’ short ends have been carved to resemble façades, each with one door and three windows. The arrangement is identical, yet each house is subtly different, shaped by the wear and irregularities of the old bricks — just as many terraced houses appear the same, yet each is unique. The whole rests on three concrete slabs, a material often found in the gardens of such houses, but which also recalls the endless stretches of concrete road in Belgium.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
15. GOET TE BREUCK
Wachtgevel, 2022
Concrete, terraced house in scale model, pedestal
​8. WAFFELAERT​
Straatstenen, 2009
65 old bricks, 3 old concrete slabs
Valerie Doutreluingne
1981 (BE)
Valerie Doutreluingne is an architect and visual artist. Nature — and the ways in which humans intervene in it — has long played a central role in her work. As an architect, she constantly questions the impact of human creation on the environment. Landscape, terrain, greenery, and existing expressions of nature form the foundation upon which she builds.
In her visual art, she deconstructs these phenomena. In earlier works, she paints her way into the background, investigating what lies beneath the surface. In Painting for a Deer, she depicts an olive grove in Spain — a human-made landscape where she finds no idyll, only structure, and a lost deer navigating its way through it. In Catch of the Day!, all that remains of the fresh fish are its entrails and a trace of linework — the human hand almost palpably intervenes.
Her five-part work Stream of Consciousness, presented at Goet Te Breuck, explores the concreted waterways of her native region. Created in situ during a period of prolonged drought, the piece reflects the tangible effects of the climate crisis in these drainage channels between fields and roads. The brutalist lines of a straightened stream are laid bare for the viewer. There is no trace of an idyllic, nurturing nature here. Harsh and empty, this current carries away not only the scarce water from the fields but also our thoughts, which jolt awkwardly over the pockmarked landscape against the flow. The horizon is faintly visible, yet offers no promise. And still, here and there, light and spring green play a cautious game — not all hope is lost.
Her studio in Sint-Denijs can be visited by appointment via info@valeriedoutreluingne.be.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
15. GOET TE BREUCK
Stream of consciousness, 2025
Oil on linen canvas
Joëlle Dubois
1990 (BE)
Joëlle Dubois is known for her colourful, uncomplicated, and accessible paintings that sharply capture how modern humans move through an increasingly individualistic society. Her work explores themes such as gender, femininity, sexuality, diversity, and fetishism. In her more recent works, she turns to deeply personal subjects, addressing the emotions surrounding the loss of her mother and the grief that follows. The fading — and eventual loss — of selfhood and identity runs through these paintings. Where her earlier work burst with vibrant colour, Dubois now often adopts a monochrome approach, choosing a single dominant hue for each painting to reflect the emotional state she seeks to convey.
For this exhibition, six monumental canvases by Joëlle Dubois are suspended on a washing line strung between towering poles at the Weide Staande Wip location. Together, they bear the words: Hi birds, do you remember my mother? Inspired by the rural surroundings, Dubois chose a poetic, intimate direction. White laundry swaying in the breeze — a sight often seen in the countryside — stirs her memories of her mother, her grandmother, and generations of women tenderly hanging clothes to dry. It is an everyday scene that holds both beauty and melancholy. By enlarging this familiar image into canvases measuring 2.9 by 4 metres, Dubois transforms it into a monumental tribute — visible not only to passersby, but symbolically to her late mother as well. The wind rustling through the sheets becomes a carrier of memories, a whispered message to the birds, who will carry it into the sky.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
19. WEIDE STAANDE WIP
Hi birds, do you remember my mother?, 2025
printed canvas
Keteleer Gallery
Anthony Duffeleer
1972 (BE)
Anthony Duffeleer works across a variety of media to give form to his thought patterns. Objects are chosen, created, combined, or manipulated for their archetypal qualities. He sees his works as reflective conversation partners, attuned to the vibrations of our society and our ways of thinking. They serve as gateways to exploring la condition humaine, revealing existential paradoxes and the absurdity of life. This often leaves viewers with a sense of disorientation or unease, as they confront the reality of human existence — sometimes distorted, but always intriguing. Titles are an essential part of his practice: subtle, yet integral to the work, guiding the viewer in unravelling its layers at their own pace. Occasionally, a title may change even after the work has changed hands, reflecting his view that ideas evolve. For Duffeleer, each work is like a note — sometimes pragmatic, sometimes laced with humour — never striving for permanence.
In the Saint-Dionysius & Saint-Genesius Church, Duffeleer presents YARTPTYD, a scrolling LED sign that reads: YOU ARE READING THIS PRIOR TO YOUR DEATH. The red text moves slowly from right to left, acting as a contemporary memento mori. It reminds us that even this fleeting moment is part of our finite existence. The choice of format — an everyday medium for advertising or announcements — starkly contrasts with its existential content. Here, Duffeleer questions how technology shapes our communication: how cold, mechanical media can depersonalise messages, even when they address the deepest questions of life. It is a quiet yet urgent invitation to awareness.
At Hoekwinkel, his work Gij takes the form of a stately pedestal bearing a taxidermy lamb. Blindfolded, it stands solitary yet elevated between two display windows. In this rural setting, where village life appears in many forms, the installation prompts contemplation. The lamb — an ancient religious symbol of innocence and sacrifice — stands on an antique church pedestal. Traditionally, the Lamb of God meets the gaze of the viewer, creating a spiritual exchange. Here, that gaze is blocked, confronting us with the tension between faith and blindness, veneration and stillness. The pedestal elevates, while the blindfold denies all contact. This is not a glorification of the past, but a critical rereading of it — underscored by framed depictions of sheep on the wall, each with a black ink line across their eyes. These neatly arranged ‘moutons’ are pleasing to look at, yet they also raise questions about how rural change — inevitable here as elsewhere — is experienced. The animals are no longer scientific specimens; they form a group without sight, without voice. The title Them signals a shift: from seemingly objective classification to subjective, moral distinction, from scientific ordering to ideological reading.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
2. SINT-DIONYSIUS & SINT- GENESIUSKERK
YARTPTYD, 2021
Electronic LED display
Rik Rosseels Gallery
​
3. HOEKWINKEL
Gij, 2025
Mounted lamb, blindfold, antique church pedestal, brass nameplate
Rik Rosseels Gallery
Filip Dujardin
1971 (BE)
Filip Dujardin is a photographic artist with a background in architecture. His artistic work starts from the idea of architecture as a cultural phenomenon, expressed through photography, digital photomontages, and spatial installations.
His new installation Tent for Sint-Denijs City 2025 builds on sequences S-D, a work created for the previous edition of the art trail. Once again, the archetypal quick-build brick serves as the basic unit, but here it is suspended in strands, converging in a central column and anchored in a circle on site. The result is an open, tent-like structure that visitors can walk through and beneath. Traditionally, such tents are temporary shelters for travelling circuses, hosting acrobats, clowns, and animal tamers.
In Sint-Denijs, however, Dujardin’s tent is an open invitation to explore the surrounding area — a structure built from bricks he sometimes calls “pixels” of the analogue world. It becomes a primal space, an elemental shelter, where people can enter, wander, and play their part like actors on a stage.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
20. WEIDE ACHTERAAN
Tent, 2025
Steel tube, steel cable, bricks
Krystel Geerts
1993 (NL)
Krystel Geerts focuses on sculptures and installations, inspired by architecture and memory. In her work, she plays with the boundary between reality and illusion, exploring how memories and imagery shape our perspective on the world. She works with various materials such as clay, polyester, and acrylic resin, and translates digital images from her memory into tangible, physical forms.
The porcelain bas-relief Traces of a Memory unfolds in this wild garden at Daeleweg like a baroque monument, with curling lines reminiscent of the movements of the wind or the flight paths of birds that leave no traces — unlike our airplanes, which do.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
7. DAELEWEG
Traces of a Memory, 2025
Porselain
Daan Gielis
1988-2023 ( BE )
The works of Daan Gielis depict our emotional conflicts and our struggles to find consistency. Drawing from his own experience with a severe autoimmune disease, Gielis explored the contradictions of human existence: the interweaving of happiness and sorrow, fulfilled desires that only awaken new ones. His practice was marked by a punk attitude with a sharp eye for detail.
The sculpture Orb in the Sint-Dionysius & Sint-Genesius Church is inspired by De Misantroop (1568) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. That historical painting is a commentary on its time: a man turns away from the world, yet is robbed in the process. The robber, assembled by Daan Gielis from felt and foam rubber, is encapsulated in a sphere topped with a cross — the so-called globus cruciger, a fragile symbol of worldly and ecclesiastical power. As if to say: we became robbers, amassing an almost unbreakable power and prosperity, but now we are trapped, our knives dulled. The interplay between the personal and the universal, between decay and resilience, ran as a common thread through his artistic practice — and in this chapel, with the mother and child, it is all the more poignant, evoking his exhibition Mama, je hoeft niet te huilen.
LOCATION / ARTWORK
2. SINT-DIONYSIUS & SINT- GENESIUSKERK
Orb, 2021
Foam rubber, felt
Martine Gutierrez
1989 ( US )
Martine Gutierrez’s work often focuses on identity and how the perception of the self is formed, expressed, and observed. She has created music videos, billboard campaigns, films, photographs, performances, and a satirical fashion magazine in which she explores identity both as a social construct and as an authentic expression of the self.
In Body and Thrall, she portrays herself alongside a mannequin — one that appears more masculine — presented as a contemporary Adam and Eve. “Magazines and social media are the codes from which the next generation learns. Just because I am a trans woman of color doesn’t mean you can push me into the shadows. Give us autonomy over our own image, so that we can at least express our own ideas instead of being absorbed into the mainstream.”
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
2. SINT-DIONYSIUS & SINT- GENESIUSKERK
Body and Thrall, 2018
Photoprint, Ryan Lee Art gallery
Tom Herck
1984 (BE)
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Tom Herck (°1984, Sint-Truiden) is a multidisciplinary artist known for his provocative visual language and socially critical installations in which religion, consumption, and guilt collide.
The work Do Not Cross at the Chapel and meadow on Moenseweg is a new version of his previously contested installation Holy Cow: a crucified polyester cow lies on its side on scorched earth, evoking a sense of devastation and desecration. Around the work is a low wooden fence painted with the typical slanted red and black pattern inspired by police tape. Amid fields and meadows, poplars, birches, aspens, hedges, and barns, this “crime scene” is highly present, dominating its surroundings. The installation is designed as a literal crime scene, marked with four unnumbered evidence markers. These recall those used in forensic investigations, but instead of referring to the traditional fourteen Stations of the Cross, they point to the four actual attacks on earlier versions of the work. For the artist, however, they refer to societal boundary lines, ethical dilemmas around meat production and food consumption, with the crucifixion as a universal symbol of suffering and sacrifice. The work invites reflection on our treatment of animals, religious imagery, and the limits of what is acceptable. It brings us closer to questions about the global dynamics of today’s agricultural industry and our own eating habits.
At the Spiere-Helkijn basin stands The Fisherman. Once We Ruled The World. It is a colossal human skeleton (representing the human ego) fishing for a life-size plesiosaur (an extinct marine reptile) using a USB cable — a standard connection for computer peripherals. The absurd scene raises questions about the nature of our species: modern humans have been on this planet for only 300,000 years and already claim to rule the Earth, while dinosaurs became extinct millions of years ago. The work, positioned beside a body of water, invites contemplation — about our vanity, our mortality, and our place between the past (dinosaur), the present (homo sapiens), and the future (USB cable and the digital revolution).
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
5. KAPELLETJE EN WEIDE MOENSEWEG
Do not cross, 2025
Polyester, steel and wood
26. BASSIN SPIERE-HELKIJN
The Fisherman. Once We Ruled The World, 2024-2025
Polyester and steel
Herwig Ilegems
1962 (BE)
Herwig Ilegems studied at the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts in Antwerp and is a guest professor of Drama at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp. As a freelance actor, Ilegems has performed in numerous theatre, film, and television productions. He is the author, art director, and director of the TV series Duts, which was nominated for Best Comedy at the Monte Carlo Television Festival in 2011. He is also the co-author and director of the black-and-white TV series Clinch, created for Canvas.
The film Head to Head is an audiovisual installation in which Herwig Ilegems attempts to connect with animals (rooster, peacock, goat, ox, donkey, alpaca, eagle owl, water buffalo, and ostrich). He stands literally head to head with them — not from a perspective of human superiority, but from one of equality. Gently, he rests his forehead against the beak, nose, or forehead of an animal.
Without words, he upends the traditional human–animal relationship. With each animal, he begins at the same eye level, seeking eye contact, following its gaze, and mimicking its behaviour. When he senses the animal is at ease, he tries to rest his head against theirs. The result is a wistful, warm, intimate, sometimes humorous, and detached narrative that conveys a deep desire to find that delicate balance.
“As humans, we are becoming increasingly distanced from nature. I noticed this while making Head to Head. With the animals, it felt as though I had entered another reality.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
11. SCHUUR
Head to Head, 2022
Film, 91 min
Susanna Inglada
1983 (ES)
Susanna Inglada (1983, Spain) lives and works in Amsterdam. Her work explores power relations, authority, corruption, complicity, and gender inequality. She draws inspiration from Catalan and Spanish culture, history, and the politics that surround her.
Her installations and drawings function like chapters in a story, in which these themes are expressed through overlapping, struggling bodies. In these scenes of twisting figures — often arranged like a theatre set — the viewer steps into a stage where they are immediately compelled to participate as an actor. It is as if you are walking through a life-sized picture book in which you are free to invent the text yourself.
The heads of two sisters rise from the earth. They do not cry out. They invite. With open mouths and attentive eyes, they do not wish to warn like Cassandra before them, but to play. Up there Down there is not just a sculpture; it is a meeting place, created for us from two sisterly bodies. A curved ramp stretches out between them like a tongue, a bridge where children and adults can walk, rest, or slide.
Inspired by the radical, playful architecture of the 1960s, this work is a call to create spaces that encourage imagination and connection. The sisters stand on the ground of a former cemetery, a place where once only silence reigned. Now it has become a place for presence, connection, and joy. They do not speak in words — but if you pause, sit down, bow, or laugh long enough, you just might hear what these sisters have always known.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
1. KERKPLEIN
Up there Down there, 2025
Acrylic paint on aluminum and PVC
Galerie Maurits van de Laar
Stanislas Lahaut
1979 (BE)
Stanislas Lahaut is a conceptual and minimalist artist who seeks a balance between poetic lightness and disarming spontaneity. His versatile works are often inspired by his own surroundings. Through minimal interventions, he adds a poetic, playful footnote to our daily reality. Found objects or situations gain a subtle twist — a new connection that changes our perception of our own environment.
Many of his works are based on simple yet intelligent observations. His reflections on the world are neither condescending nor prescriptive, but illustrate the shifting movement between his everyday experiences and his reflections on those experiences.
These versatile works are rich in layers and open to many interpretations; they often dwell on the poetic potential of life and serve as observations on the lightness of existence and the condition humaine.
The works Untitled (SLOW IS FAST ENOUGH), located at Kapelletje & Weide Moenseweg and at Waffelaert, carefully reflect on the changing nature of time, and on life on and with the land. It is an intriguing contradictio in terminis that mirrors our modern, fast-moving society. It invites contemplation and encourages us to think critically about the paradox of speed in today’s world, where haste and efficiency are often seen as the norm. With the message “SLOW IS FAST ENOUGH,” he challenges us to reconsider the value of slowing down. It calls for awareness of our pace, urging us to release the rush of daily life and to value moments of rest and reflection. In an era where everything is instantly available, the work advocates for a renewed connection with ourselves and the world around us, allowing us to experience the beauty of slowing down
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
5. KAPELLETJE & WEIDE MOENSEWEG
Untitled (SLOW IS FAST ENOUGH), 2025
Glas, neon, transfo
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8.WAFFELAERT
Untitled (SLOW IS FAST ENOUGH), 2025
Acryl on linnen canvas
Lieven Lefere
1978 (BE)
Lieven Lefere is a photographer who plays with the relationship between the photograph and reality. Photography is his means of constructing a new, subjective reality in which what was hidden is revealed. His process often begins even before the photograph is taken. Lefere is frequently inspired by existing (re)constructions of reality, sometimes in collaboration with scientists. At other times, he builds his own sets and scenes, based on historical research or personal memories. The resulting images are at once suggestive and unsettling, seemingly without spectacle yet layered and charged.
For about a decade, Lefere has been working with forensic anthropologist Martin Smith from Bournemouth University. He engages with facts or remnants from the professor’s scientific research. Since 2019, Lefere has been following the excavation of a collapsed Neolithic burial mound near Cirencester, which inspired him to map specific Neolithic sites in the United Kingdom. The series Shadow is a hole questions our relationship with the past, and how archaeology can exert a lasting influence on the way we think about ourselves. Every investigation forces us to reconsider our preconceived ideas from a different perspective. Archaeologists, for example, try to determine whether a stone was placed in a particular spot by natural forces or by human hands. These research strategies highlight the tension between natural processes and human reason.
Lefere constructs the atmosphere of his images by working at night with added light sources, turning the scene into a kind of stage set. He often captures multiple moments within a single image, or works with long exposure times. This makes the light almost tangible, and the resulting image more painterly — as if the moment is endlessly stretched. Yet time itself is not the primary subject of his photographs; what he depicts seems to exist outside of time. The title of the series, Shadow is a hole, refers to the research of phenomenologist Roberto Casati, who studies the phenomena of shadows and holes. Casati notes that both cannot be defined without running into internal contradictions. He sees a shadow as a hole in the light, connecting the two terms. Light (and therefore shadow) plays a crucial role in our perception, particularly in rendering perspective. It is also a key visual tool in photography.
Many archaeological sites reveal themselves through local disturbances in the natural landscape. Archaeologists must then dig out cavities to bring what is hidden to light. In this series, Lefere searches for these contrasts: the hollow in relation to the mound, the visible in relation to the invisible, and the natural in relation to the constructed.
LOCATION / ARTWORS
4. HOEVE DE RODE POORT
Shadow is a hole / Hollow, 2022
Inkjet print on Photo Rag glued to Dibond, wenge frame, anti-reflective glass
Shadow is a hole / Monolith, 2023
Inkjet print on Photo Rag glued to Dibond, wenge frame, anti-reflective glass
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Shadow is a hole / Ash hole, 2022
Inkjet print on Photo Rag glued to Dibond, wenge frame, anti-reflective glass
Enrique Marty
1969 (ES)
Enrique Marty has created an extensive body of work that spans sculpture, painting, watercolour, video, and animation. Together, these works explore the human soul and delve into the complexities of human existence. Stylistically, Marty draws from the aesthetics of amateur imagery, mass communication, and popular storytelling techniques, while his approach is rooted in the continuous recording and reproduction of private experiences and everyday life. Rather than interpreting, the artist simply records, creating a kind of “encyclopaedia” of the so-called everyday — a complex comédie humaine with both light and dark passages.
Marty’s sculptures, in particular, function as three-dimensional portraits, often based on moulds of real people. Yet these sculptures go beyond mere likeness; they incorporate doll-like features and elements from the Western figurative sculptural tradition, including the Baroque. By blending the familiar with the unfamiliar, Marty challenges viewers to reconsider how we relate to the human body, identity, and the passage of time.
The works De Profundis are inspired by the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, while also evoking elements of Cologne Cathedral. The first art book Marty ever held as a child was about Peter Paul Rubens, sparking a lifelong fascination with Rubens’s work and with religious architecture. In these two panels, painted in oil, tempera, and watercolour, he integrates figures that reference classical artworks, and animates the space with birds — owls and peacocks — emerging as if from an altar growing like an oak tree. Marty also deliberately captures the play of light, channelling the interplay of natural light, stained glass hues, candlelight, and spotlights into the depicted scenes. His aim is to invite visitors to reflect on their vision of humanity and the world, and to immerse themselves in the depths of beauty found in such a historic sanctuary of silence.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
2. SINT-DIONYSIUS & SINT-GENESIUSKERK
De Profundis, 2024
Oil paint, tempera, and watercolor on panel
Keteleer Gallery
Nadia Naveau
1975 (BE)
Nadia Naveau lives and works in Antwerp. In her sculptures and installations, she allows personal and collective memories to interact in a play of images, symbols, texture, colour, scale, and presentation. The resulting works resemble assemblages; they spark countless imaginings and open the door to even more stories. Throughout her career, the artist has engaged in a playful dialogue with her own work. Her sculptures are often meeting points between highly irregular, organic elements and stylised, abstracted forms.
Each sculpture has a dual origin. On one hand, it draws from her vast collection of photographs, photocopies, newspaper and magazine clippings, and fragments from second-hand books; on the other, it is shaped by her instinctive response to motifs and memories, ranging from remnants of Ancient Greece to a Disney cartoon from her childhood. Her work has once been described as “Bernini meets The Simpsons” — a catchy phrase that can never fully capture the intricate ideas shaping her sculptures and wider oeuvre, but which does convey the relative absurdity and bold humour embedded in her mind, method, and practice.
Roman Riots is a contemporary interpretation of the “Centauromachy,” a mythical Greek battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs that erupted during a wedding feast and is a recurring subject in Classical art. This figurative sculpture, made of polyester and steel, is characteristic of the artist’s composite formal language. She creates a framework onto which she hangs image fragments — such as the god Apollo wearing a motorcycle helmet, a Centaur (a hybrid horse-man) with a diving helmet, an eye-catching Rolls-Royce, and the cartoon character Popeye the Sailor Man. This seductive, surprising sculpture is the result of a carefully balanced play with colours, shapes, materials, and scale. Blending classical and modern influences with absurd elements, the work feels both dynamic and playful. It bridges past and present, while inviting viewers to reconsider the fragile relationship between humans and animals.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
15. GOET TE BREUCK
Roman Riots, 2018
Epoxy and Inox
Base Alpha Gallery
Bart Stolle
1974 (BE)
Bart Stolle combines animation with painting, drawing, sculpture, and sound in his artistic practice. Since his debut, he has intertwined his works under the umbrella of Low Fixed Media Show: a fictional advertising agency for the artist and his work on one hand, and on the other, an alternative artistic enterprise specialising in entertainment. In our fast-paced reality, where our empathic and creative capacities are burdened by the flood of digital stimuli, Stolle chooses a practice that operates both analog and digital, with artisanal slowness at its core.
The painting Little Giants can be found at the Waffelaert location. Stolle constructs his paintings meticulously according to self-imposed rules: for instance, a black surface may never be painted directly on a blue background, and certain colours — such as cobalt blue and cadmium orange — recur frequently. These were the first two colours to be produced on an industrial scale in the textile industry. Stolle deliberately opts for an early modernist visual language, aiming to say as much as possible with the fewest possible means.
At Café In de zon, the animated film Darwinian Symphony explores the parallels between computer logic and the human mind. Stolle is convinced that the computer will never replace the role of the artist, and that no algorithm can substitute human creativity. Here, as in his precise paintings and daily drawings, he seeks out the tension between the digitally generated “appearance” and the underlying craftsmanship.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
8. WAFFELAERT
Little Giants, 2009
Oil paint and varnish on canvas
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9. CAFÉ IN DE ZON
Darwinian Symphony, 2016
Animation, 06:19’
Stijn Stagier
1976 (BE)
Stijn Stragier is an architect, visual art photographer, and digital artist. Subtle anomalies in his imagery prompt viewers to reconsider their spontaneous assumptions about space and structure, about people and their surroundings. In his work, Stragier explores the fine line between reality and virtuality, using technologies such as a self-built full-body 3D scanner, photogrammetry, and complex computer graphics. From real photographs of surreal scenes to realistic computer-generated environments, each series invites wonder and doubt.
At Sint-Denijs-City 2023, Stijn Stragier presented the work KONDO. With his current work SOLAR, he continues to explore the theme of mass production and indifference. Jean-Marc Jancovici, French ecologist and creator of the term “ecological footprint,” attributes one cause of human indifference to the striatum, the part of our brain that rewards us with dopamine — for example, while scrolling on a smartphone. We seek short-term satisfaction and soothe our conscience with innovations such as electric cars and solar panels. However, the striatum prevents us from reflecting deeply on the geopolitical issues of raw materials, circularity, and long-term consequences. The base material of SOLAR is used solar panels. Worldwide, there are seven billion solar panels in use, many of which are nearing the end of their life cycle. Globally, only ten percent of discarded panels are partially recycled, with the rest ending up in landfills.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
4. HOEVE DE RODE POORT
SOLAR, 2025
UV-print on solar panel
Roeland Tweelinckx
1970 (BE)
Roeland Tweelinckx creates sculptures and site-specific interventions based on everyday objects. He subtly plays with the environment and our perception. This car, too, has a strong trompe-l’œil quality, producing a slight sense of confusion while at the same time inviting a disruption of our conditioned way of seeing. The artist does not use objets trouvés, but instead navigates between the idea of reproduction and a functionality that, in this work, is irrevocably lost.
At the location Hoek Moenseweg Daeleweg, a car seems to have casually landed on its nose, and the work In the middle of a doubt gives the rural character of the area an urgent twist — a bit like the stress we carry from our daily commute and wish to leave behind when we travel. The maddening traffic jams, the domestic worries, the proverbial monkey on our back — shifting them aside. Turning the world upside down, and wondering which way to go next… after that moment of rest, after the holiday, after the summer? Or should we make a point of it today?
With the traffic sign How did I get here at the location Belvedèreweg, he combines an existing metal traffic pole with a ceramic plate. The white arrows tell you to walk around a roundabout, while the glazed colours call for your attention to pause for a moment. It resembles a Delft blue plate depicting an old windmill with turning sails. Does this signpost bring a touch of disorientation, or can you continue your walk without a care?
At the location Weide Spiereweg, we find Nieuwbouw te koop. Announcements like these set the marketing machine of real estate agencies spinning at full speed, often wake up local residents, and leave a potential buyer oscillating between temptation and resistance. Part of his artistic practice revolves around the dialogue that arises between viewers when they encounter the work. A simple signboard like this can stir dreams in some and dread in others. In any case, it is a harbinger of change. Or is it?
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
6. HOEK MOENSEWEG-DAELEWEG
In the middle of a doubt, 2025
Car on its nose
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12. BELVEDÈREWEG
Delfts blauw verkeersbord, 2025
Ceramics, glaze, and traffic sign pole
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21. WEIDE SPIEREWEG
Nieuwbouw te koop, 2025
Wood, fittings, and prints
Diane Marie Uwase
1993 (RW)
Diane Marie Uwase is a self-taught artist based in Antwerp, Belgium, whose practice is rooted in allegorical portraiture. Her work places strong emphasis on both the physical likeness and the personal stories of her subjects. This process unfolds in an intuitive and immersive way, often beginning with chance encounters and developing further through one or more photo sessions and in-depth interviews. Central to Uwase’s method is the significant time she spends engaging with each individual, leading to a profound understanding of their thoughts, lived realities, and experiences. Through this approach, she explores a wide range of themes—psychological, social, cultural, and more—analyzed through a critical feminist lens. Each of her works strives to convey the complexity of identity, society, and embodiment, presenting nuanced, layered narratives that resist simplistic portrayals.
For Wat Was, she presents a series of eight paintings, each framed within arched panels that evoke the shape and intimacy of a window. These works invite the viewer to look back—towards fragments of memory, faded identities, and the echoes of long-vanished emotions. In their absence, the figures in the paintings speak of something lost, yet what remains is rich with the quiet traces of a journey. The human form appears in fleeting shadows, not as something to mourn, but as a reflection on the passage of time. Each work offers a glimpse of what once was, at once a delicate reverence for what has faded and a quiet acknowledgement of the beauty in transformation.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
4. HOEVE DE RODE POORT
What Was - Voor wat was, 2025
Acrylic paint on panel
Koen Vanmechelen
1965 (BE)
Koen Vanmechelen is an interdisciplinary artist and one of the most versatile thinkers of his time. His work explores the boundaries between art, science, philosophy, and community.
An eternal migrant, he travels the world in search of answers to fundamental questions about timeless yet urgent themes such as identity, diversity, globalisation, and human rights. These answers—always works in progress—are woven into enigmatic artworks and projects. His quests and interdisciplinary initiatives invite collaboration, creating both awareness and a movement among communities across the globe. Together, they reflect on the human animal’s shared legacy and explore the different ways we choose to live and evolve together.
Mantle of Love, on view at Sint-Dionysius & Sint-Genesius Church, features a taxidermied reclining tiger with black marble wings. As in much of his work, Vanmechelen operates across disciplines, probing the thresholds between art, science, philosophy, and community. An eternal migrant, he roams the world seeking answers to pressing questions of identity, diversity, globalisation, and human rights, weaving his findings into enigmatic works that aim to spark awareness and collective movement.
Here, a majestic, elevated creature stands before us—yet not without danger. Beneath those wings may lurk the Champawat Tigress: wounded, hunted, driven to the unthinkable. A killer. In the stories of tiger hunter Jim Corbett, it was rarely the nature of the animal that killed, but rather the injury inflicted by humans. The mantle of love here covers not from compassion, but from fear—fear of facing what chafes, bites, disrupts. In the sacred silence of the church, covering becomes a moral act: camouflage instead of confrontation. What is covered is not questioned. And therein lies the danger. It is not instinct that kills, but the ritual that refuses to meet its gaze. Who covers what, and why?
Dreaming is vital. Children everywhere should be able to dream about their future. Sometimes, they need a little extra support to do so. Vanmechelen created the CosmoGolem for this very reason. At 17, he built a giant wooden figure called the CosmoGolem. Making it made him feel good, helping him to better understand himself. He wanted to share that feeling with all children, so they too can dream—and discover who they are and what they want.
The CosmoGolem has an open head, symbolising the freedom to think whatever you want. It has no facial expression—no smile, no tears, no anger, no fear, no madness—showing that everything you think, feel, and wish for the future is possible. You are entirely free to imagine and to consider what the world might look like. You are free to come up with new ideas—that’s creativity. The CosmoGolem loves to collect new ideas, dreams, and lived experiences. With his large hands, he helps wherever he can; his sturdy feet ensure he stands firmly, so you can lean on him. And with these traits, he travels to children all over the world.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
2. SINT-DIONYSIUS & SINT- GENESIUSKERK
Mantle of Love, 2024
Mounted tiger, black marble
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7. DAELEWEG
CosmoGolem, 2025
Wood
Klaas Van der Linden
1986 (BE)
Klaas Van der Linden is a Belgian painter. He began experimenting with graffiti and street art at the age of twelve and later studied Free Graphics. In 2014, he graduated with a Master’s degree in Graphic Arts from LUCA School of Arts in Ghent. Van der Linden creates both murals and paintings.
On the wall of Café Driwiski, he painted the mural KING 4 A DAY, FOOL 4 A LIFETIME. The artist often chooses nocturnal self-portraits, models readily at hand, or inspiration drawn from his surroundings. Under the starlight, alongside the creatures of the night, you might take the time to quietly revisit his scenes—composed with spray paint and brush—as though following a cart track into the dark.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
10. CAFÉ DRIWISKI
KING 4 A DAY, FOOL 4 A LIFETIME, 2025
Paint on wall
John Van Oers
1967 (BE)
Sculptor John Van Oers moves with his sculptures between lightness and weight. His “notes” are playful, variable in nature, and arise from the immediacy of experience. Everyday objects are distilled and their visual potential explored. Van Oers’ works tend toward abstraction, but never fully become abstract.
His choice of materials is as honest as his subjects; stripped of all possible ballast, natural materials speak in pure simplicity. In this way, John Van Oers develops a personal vocabulary that offers both autobiographical and purely aesthetic elements.
The act of “playing” with form, content, and material remains his driving force. His stage-like sculptures—where architecture and landscape often take centre stage—invite interventions from the viewer, who in turn continues the artist’s “game” (imaginary?). The dialogue sparked between the everyday and the aesthetic is both meaningful and heartwarming.
The small figure in COME TO ME is only 35 centimetres tall, with invitingly outstretched arms and a face painted white. Its body is made from reclaimed wood, and atop its head sits a small black plastic sphere. That sphere is a poetic suggestion: is it a dark cloud? A relic? A strange headpiece? Within the calm of its presence lies something unsettling, something that keeps us at a distance while also beckoning us closer. As if the figure knows something we are not yet ready to know. John Van Oers replaces the familiar saint—radiating innocence, comfort, and devotion—with an ambiguous, mysterious character. Recognisable and yet elusive. This little sculpture shifts meaning back and forth, probing, hiding, and revealing all at once.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
5. KAPELLETJE & WEIDE MOENSEWEG
COME TO ME, 2025
Wood, metal, hardboard, plastic, paint, pencil
Juliette Vanwaterloo
1993 (BE)
Juliette Vanwaterloo is an activist artist focused on feminist, ecological, and decolonial issues. While a rhetoric of war and armament dominates the daily media discourse, she builds a subtle yet defiant body of work. As a young artist, she works diligently on a textile protest. Her critique of our violent society is sharp and uncompromising, yet carries a strikingly tactile and even cuddly appeal.
Her work Tout cramer, shown at the Waffelaert location, is made of wool, acrylic, merino, and mohair linen, and—through its tufted carpet form—offers a strong sensory character. Here she depicts an image we have come to know all too well from the media: the world appears to be on fire, police cars come and go, and parked vehicles burn out. Her work places itself at the centre of the room and on the walls in the form of immersive installations, stretching across the chaos of current world events from social, migratory, ecological, and political perspectives. In doing so, she questions the legitimacy of violence on the margins of or during demonstrations.
She enjoys moving between the dualities of village and city. With La banque d’un monde qui brûle – Bancontact, presented at Goet Te Breuck, she draws inspiration from building façades such as the cash machine in Sint-Denijs. Bancontact is, in essence, a payment scheme responsible for the control, calculation, and processing of electronic transactions. And while today’s world increasingly shifts towards the digital, online, and mobile transfer of small and large sums, the demand for physical cash points remains significant. Tangible money in circulation as a means of payment can be physically held; coins and banknotes still prove to be an accessible payment method. Yet, during demonstrations in major cities, these cash machines are often among the first to be destroyed, rendering them unusable. It remains striking that the same two major symbols are so often targeted during protests: banks and the police.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
8. WAFFELAERT
Tout cramer, 2024
Tufted carpet work with wool, acrylic, merino, mohair, and linen
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​15. GOET TE BREUCK
La banque d’un monde qui brûle + Bancontact, 2023
Patchwork and machine embroidery using wool, acrylic, cotton, organza, and sewing thread
Loïc Van Zeebroek
1994 (BE)
Loïc Van Zeebroek is a painter who broadens our perspective—both on painting itself and on the landscapes and objects that surround us. At first glance, everything in his paintings appears familiar, yet the image is never quite what it seems. The memory of the landscape from his childhood along the River Scheldt is reinterpreted without lapsing into sentimental nostalgia. His paintings invite a slow gaze, akin to walking in nature and absorbing as many sensory impressions as possible. From the recognisable elements in his work, our own memories and daydreams are stirred.
Untitled is a diptych composed of two large canvases, each measuring 180 by 200 centimetres. On the left, there is a reference to the landscape of Sint-Denijs; on the right, a green curtain conceals underlying attempts at painting. The work is the result of navigating between painting over and preserving spontaneous impulses and ideas.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
5. KAPELLETJE & WEIDE MOENSEWEG
Untitled, 2025
Oil paint on canvas
Dauwens & Beernaert gallery
Robin Vermeersch
1977 (BE)
Robin Vermeersch works across a range of media. His sculptures, paintings, and drawings reveal a kind of cellular world—existential in nature and capable of being experienced on a cosmic scale. The viewer can approach these works in different ways: as autonomous pieces that function individually, or as elements within a larger constellation, where each takes on new meaning and together they form an uncanny universe.
Vermeersch’s work subtly refers to the reality around us without ever depicting it realistically. It merely recalls the world we know, focusing instead on nuance and detail. He enlarges these details, pushes their boundaries, and transforms them into something entirely new. The familiar is dismantled and reassembled, creating a new whole from its fragments.
The Daisy sculptures at Voortuintje are assemblages of borrowed and reworked forms from nature, the human body, and tangible shapes such as succulents. Here, reality and the imagination of that reality converge. What is real, and what is a derivative?
The pedestals of the ceramic works at Weide Staande Wip are both part of the sculpture and its support—a nod to Constantin Brancusi and the modernists. These pieces appear sliced apart and then reassembled into new forms. As the plants grow, the sculptures themselves continue to evolve, remaining in constant motion. What is real, and what is a derivative?
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
18. VOORTUINTJE
Daisy, 2018
Epoxy, acrylic polyester, steel
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19. WEIDE STAANDE WIP
Haute levée, 2022
Keramiek, hout, planten, olieverf
Au bon coin, 2022
Ceramics, wood, plants, oil paint
Odelay, 2022
Ceramics, wood, plants, oil paint
Tinus Vermeersch
1976 (BE)
Tinus Vermeersch combines in his paintings, drawings, and sculptures old techniques and traditional craftsmanship with a highly personal visual language. With his oeuvre, he creates a surreal universe full of contradictions that both seduces and deceives the viewer.
Zonder titel (Hooimijt) in the Garden of Breath and Food is a solitary reminder of a (romanticised) rural past, when, until quite recently, summer fields filled with temporary hayricks were a common sight. It takes only a single generation to forget what the landscape looked like for centuries. Placed within the context of an exhibition and altered through subtle sculptural interventions, the structure evokes new associations that surpass its functional nature (drying hay).
Untitled is an architectural ornament in fired clay on the wall of Hoeve Brucqtraat, where one can feel the artist’s affinity for craftsmanship in his exploration of form and line. In all his paintings, drawings, and sculptures, he often combines old and traditional techniques with a highly personal visual language. He creates a surreal universe of contradictions that entices the viewer—like a trompe l’oeil, a medallion, a mantelpiece, a modest showpiece. In a way, he demonstrates an attachment to the familiar: “Tinus Vermeersch does not rush—not towards a hypothetical modernity, not towards his great Flemish forebears, not even towards his own imagination. He calmly gives form to what his subconscious dictates. Slowly, carefully, intensely. And at every step, he is guided by his instinct.”
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
17. TUIN VAN ADEM EN ETEN
Zonder titel (Hooimijt), 2025
Wood, straw, rope, stone
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​​14. HOEVE BRUCQSTRAAT
Untitled, 2025
Ceramic
Klaus Verscheure
1968 (BE)
Klaus Verscheure is a visual artist and director who describes himself as a chronicler.
The video installation San Sebastian is based on the New Testament story in which Sebastian stands up for the weak and becomes a victim of the ruling power. As a Roman soldier, he was ordered to help persecute Christians, but having secretly converted to Christianity himself, he decided to hide other Christians from repression. When his fellow soldiers discovered this, he was sentenced to death and executed by a hail of arrows. He was later canonised and became the patron saint of archers, hunters, soldiers, and firefighters.
From the Renaissance onwards, the scene of the man pierced by arrows became a favourite subject for painters. Even today, Saint Sebastian remains an icon when it comes to depicting the beauty of the male body. The image of the martyr has become a symbol for those who resist the “normal norm” and for the courage of anyone who dares to speak up for their beliefs. Yet, as history shows, every spoken opinion quickly meets someone eager to silence it.
For Klaus Verscheure, this work is a way to question humanity’s fascination with violence—and to challenge viewers by placing them in an ethical dilemma. The installation offers the possibility to fire a (virtual) arrow into the body of the portrayed figure: a naked man bound to a tree trunk. A few metres in front of the screen stands a column with a push button. Pressing it will launch a digital arrow into the victim’s body. Or will it?
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
2. SINT-DIONYSIUS & SINT- GENESIUSKERK
SAN SEBASTIAN, 2025
Video installation, variable dimensions
Katleen Vinck
1976 (BE)
Katleen Vinck is a visual artist who lives and works in Antwerp. In her work, she merges characteristics of sculpture, architecture, and scenography, often using three-dimensional objects.
Her sculptural works Dust to Dust (location Wijngaard) and A Thousand Years (location Café de France) stem from her deep fascination with architecture. Architectural foundations are often the last enduring remnants of long-lost civilizations. What Vinck aims to reveal is not the loss itself, but the beauty of what is temporary. Her work feels more futuristic than post-apocalyptic.
Everything changes over time into something new. Her sculptures are rarely finished constructions or singular monuments, but rather evoke that fleeting, intangible moment of transformation. She works with the essence of archetypal architectural elements, which function both as relics and as new beginnings.
Drawing from her archive of images of existing structures and natural phenomena, Katleen Vinck develops two sculptures that reference ruins, bunkers, megalithic remains, as well as sci-fi and Brutalist architecture. They simultaneously archive, reconstruct, and transform. They connect across places and layers of time while preserving the memory function of their original forms.
Both works, Dust to Dust and A Thousand Years, are part of her research into transformation—into hybrids between nature and construction, and into the boundary between architecture and sculpture. Structures are stored, dissected, and rebuilt—balancing on the threshold between the recognizable and the elusive. Floating forms detach themselves from their architectural foundations and take on the autonomy of sculpture. Every component of these works suggests change, growth, and adaptability.
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
13. WIJNGAARD
Dust to Dust ?, 2023
Steel, acrylic resin, cement, paint, polystyrene
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​​25. CAFÉ DE FRANCE
A Thousand Years ?, 2025
Steel, acrylic resin, cement, paint, PU (polyurethane)
Tom Woestenborghs
1978 (BE)
Tom Woestenborghs is a visual artist who uses photographic images as the basis for his collages. He collects and archives these images, primarily by photographing them himself, but also by drawing from magazines, videos, and the internet.
When an artist removes existing imagery from its original context and reuses it as an artwork, there is always an intention behind it—a way of raising a social or cultural question.
Although Woestenborghs’ work may appear photographic at first glance, it is in fact composed of collages made from multiple images, built up in many layers of self-adhesive plastic film. Trained as a painter, Woestenborghs eventually turned to plastic film because it offers a sharper, more luminous effect than paint. He presents his collages both as ‘paintings’ and as lightboxes.
The work Artificial landscaping depicts a landscape whose visual language recalls 1980s computer games. The collage is constructed from small squares, nodding to the vector-based imagery of the time—lines connected through anchor points. With this work, the artist aims to construct a visually pleasing and harmonious landscape using the most minimal means possible.​
LOCATION / ARTWORKS
4. HOEVE DE RODE POORT
Artificial landscaping, 2025
X-film collage on lightbox
