PRESENTATION: Worldlines (HISK Laureates 2023)

HISK’s artists in residency come from a plethora of cultural environments through which they have formed distinctive trajectories, practices, and methodologies. While each artist draws particular world lines and curves in spacetime before and throughout their residency, gravity infers mutual influences of worldlines that can be reciprocally modified by the shared events they experience. During their journey at HISK, many occasions prove the opportunity to explore simultaneity and difference.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: HISK Archive

The exhibition “Worldlines” is not structured by a theme that would try to incorporate their heterogeneous works, but it proposes a metaphor borrowed from astrophysics allowing to underline the way in which some significant sensitive fields of attraction (that are the ecological, ontological, psychological, social, identity and political crises) can be able to influence the trajectories of the works without absorbing them. Fabiola Burgos Labra studied art at Universidad Católica de Valparaíso between 2003-2008. In 2011, she completed an MFA degree at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago. She is a 2022–2023 resident at HISK. Burgos has organised and produced various exhibitions and interventions in the public space in Valparaiso, Santiago, and elsewhere. Jim Campers grew up in Antwerp, where he still lives and works today. Between 2009-2011, he trained as a photographer at Brussels’ Sint-Lukas and at the academies of Leipzig (2011) and Antwerp (2012-2013), the latter where he obtained his MA. While he embarked on his artistic journey through photography, Jim Campers’ practice progressively embraced installations, sculpture and – more recently – video pieces. Hamed Dehqan is a visual artist who lives and works in Brussels. Based on personal studies and research around materials, forms and non-linguistic perception, the artist’s oeuvre is rooted in a studio-based practice that creates a unique formal language through sculptural installations, multi-dimensional spatial drawings, and paintings. Hamed Dehqan is an artist in residence at HISK (2022-2023) doing advanced studies and practice- based research in visual arts. In parallel, he is doing a master’s in fine arts at Brussels’ Luca School of Art. Maëlle Dufour explores progress, the archaeology of waste and memory through complex systems and monumental installations. A HISK resident, she studied sculpture at La Cambre and in Finland, and has taken part in several prestigious exhibitions both in Belgium and abroad, such as Artagon III, chaired by Hans Ulrich Obrist (Paris), BPS22 (BE), Triennale Beaufort and Universidad de Conception. She has also been invited to Shake Résidence Nomade, Maac, Brussels, Alumi Startwell, Amsterdam. In 2022, she created an artistic integration for the Brussels Haren prison. Maud Gourdon is a visual artist who works with publications, texts, drawings, and sculptures climaxing in installations. In 2014, Maud Gourdon obtained her first master’s degree in communication at Strasbourg’s Haute école des arts du Rhin. She then received her second master’s degree in visual arts at Ghent’s KASK in 2017. Her work has been shown at Beige Rile, M-Museum, Cas-co, the Pavillon Charles Vandenhove, Le Transpalette, S.M.A.K, Le 19, CRAC, Damien and the Love Guru and Kiosk.

Danielle Kaganov is an Israeli-Russian multidisciplinary artist working in Brussels, is currently a resident at HISK (2022-2023). Her practice focuses on film, performance, photography, installation, and drawing. In 2020, she obtained her MFA from Bezalel Academy. Her works have been shown in various exhibitions and festivals, including Docaviv, Printscreen, Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival (TISFF), Prussia Foundation, Vienna (2023). She was awarded the Cooper prize in 2017, and, in 2020, she received the first prize at TISFF experimental competition. In 2022, she received the Ilana Elovic prize. In February 2022, she had her first solo exhibition in Tel Aviv’s Hamidrasha Gallery. Axelle Lenaerts is a visual artist and filmmaker who explores the world poetically. Translating emotions and stories into images, the artist combines alternating and mixing, the media, film, photography, drawings, and text. In 2019, Axelle Lenaerts graduated from her Master’s in Fine Arts (Media art) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. During her studies, she took additional courses in photography, cinematography, and bookbinding. Since graduating, Axelle Lenaerts has been working on a mid-length documentary called “Do You Hear the Wind in the Pine Trees?”, which should be finalised in early 2024. Currently, Axelle Lenaerts is pursuing a postgraduate program at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) 2022–2023 in Brussels. Paola Siri Renard lives and works in Paris and Brussels. Her sculptural work investigates art history, architecture and natural processes, like sloughing or fossilisation. From prevailing architectural forms, the artist isolates sculptural ornaments, which are then rescaled, segmented and reassembled into new compositions. Stripped from the original context, the elements gain an anachronistic dimension, carrying aesthetic codes from varying time periods. Renard’s visual language evokes metamorphosis, bodies disintegrating and morphing into new constellations. Her sculptures unveil and distort formal grids and political structures, subtly influencing spatial arrangements and dynamics of social interactions. Renard’s work raises questions about the treatment of heritage, its dissemination, and the exclusionary underpinnings that marginalise specific identities. Jivan van der Ende studied fashion design at ArtEZ Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem and moved in 2016 to Belgium, where she obtained her masters in installation art at KASK & Conservatoire in Ghent. In 2020 she initiated and curated the YouTube ArtSpace, an online exhibition platform and showed her first solo-exhibition in LLS Paleis, Antwerpen. In 2021 she was artist in residence at Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee and at M-atelier, Leuven. Yue Yuan is an artist and curator. Today, he works on the Flixbus which runs between Paris and Brussels. He has pledged to organise an exhibition in ten years’ time at the Image/imatge centre d’art in Orthez, which will be entitled “Promise”.

Participating Artists: Fabiola Burgos Labra, Jim Campers, Hamed Dehqan, Maëlle Dufour, Maud Gourdon, Danielle Kaganov, Axel Korban, Axelle Lenaerts, Paola Siri Renard, Jivan van der Ende and Yue Yuan.

Photo: Maud Gourdon, A Flower is Speaking to a Dog – Publication, © Maud Gourdon, Courtesy the artist and HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts)

Info: Curator: Sébastien Pluot, HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts), Gosset site – Building A (first floor), Gabrielle Petitstraat 4-6, Brussels, Belgium, Duration: 23/11-17/12/2023, Days & Hours: Thu-Fri 14:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-18:00, https://hisk.edu/