INTERGENERATIONAL SPACE – DRAWING WORKSHOP

In the often hurried world of contemporary imagery, certain experiences take the time to make us pause and look – and, in doing so, shift the very boundaries of creation. At La Cambre’s Drawing Workshop, such a shift took place, not in the solitude of the artist facing their sheet of paper, but in the fragile and fertile space of encounter.

Indeed, nothing was premeditated. From the disappearance of an expected academic framework arose a hypothesis: that of a workshop where otherness would no longer be a subject, but a condition. By inviting senior citizens from the municipality of Ixelles to share the extended process of drawing with the students, the project established an almost archaic situation—in the noble sense: that of doing things together, of gestures passed on, shifted, and sometimes thwarted.

What unfolded there goes beyond simple collaboration. It is a learning of attention. First, towards the other person — their pace, their silences, their resistance. Then, towards the material — whether it takes the form of a fragment of bark, a memory recorded on a postcard, a textile pattern or an imaginary flow. Each pair invented their own grammar, often hesitant, sometimes discordant, but always imbued with life.

From these fifteen weeks of work emerge forms that are neither quite a work of art nor quite a testimony, but rather a rare in-between: a thought in the process of taking shape. Here, the bark becomes a metaphor for the intimate and the visible; there, a rogue wave condenses fascination and threat; elsewhere, a forgotten correspondence summons the spectres of a fragmented memory. Each proposal engages with a way of being in the world, woven into dialogue.

What strikes one, perhaps, is the way in which these heterogeneous practices compose a shared landscape without ever becoming uniform. Drawing here is less a discipline than a porous territory, open to cross-pollination—from writing, sound, the body, the living. Contrary to a logic of mastery, the participants have accepted uncertainty as a method, error as a resource, the other as a condition of possibility.

In a context where generations tend to coexist rather than meet, this experience reminds us with an almost political acuity that creation can be a place of hospitality. Not a refuge, but a threshold: one where we consent to no longer know alone.

The works presented today are not so much the culmination of a project as the tangible traces of a shared process. They bear witness to a slow development—made up of adjustments, renunciations, and sudden surges—through which individuals have ventured to become a relationship.

Perhaps this, ultimately, is the most valuable aspect of this workshop: the ability to foster, at the very heart of artistic practice, a form of temporary community — attentive, vulnerable, and deeply alive.

Exhibition at the Chapelle de Boondael from 7 to 10 April 2026
Opening on 7 April 2026 from 6pm to 9pm

With
The seniors of Ixelles
Christine Denoël, Francine D’Hulst, Monique Coos, Christine Gusek, Francine Marot, Lydia Martens, Anne Parent, Michèle Roose, Chantal Soumoy, Clémentine Sungu, Dominique Thomas, Camille Verschelden.
Marie Lemaire (graphic designer, supports the teaching team in supervising the groups and is responsible for the project’s graphic design)
Pascal Capelle (head of the Senior Unit, providing support for the project’s organisation).

Students from the Drawing department
Nizar Boukroun, Tifenn Capaldi, Tristan Diederich, Camille Gloux-Frenkiel, Augusta Herbiet, Mona Raharinosy, Armand Reynaud, Adèle Simonet, Jeanne Thiebaut, Irène Van Rompay, Noémi Vossenrich.

Pedagogical staff
Aleksandra Chaushova (artist, PhD in Art, lecturer in the Drawing workshop), Léonore Frenois (artist and PhD student, supporting the project), Manu Tête (artist, lecturer in the Drawing workshop), Catherine Warmoes (artist, lecturer, head of the Drawing workshop, organiser and coordinator of the project).


A project initiated by Romain de Reusme, Mayor; Jacques de Jonghe d’Ardoye, Councillor for Senior Citizens; Gautier Calomne, Deputy Mayor responsible for Education and Culture; and members of the College of the Mayor and Councillors of Ixelles.