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De quoi le curating est-il le nom?

Meeting 46 De quoi le curating est il le nom ?

‘De quoi le curating est-il le nom? Métamorphoses d'une pratique dans le champ d'exposition’ is published by La Lettre volée. This new essay by Julie Bawin is the fruit of a reflection on the exhibition and its players, on the museum and the role played by artists in particular, and on the way in which the curatorial offer is constantly being renewed.

Over the last fifteen years or so, the word ‘curating’ has become a particularly fashionable code word in the world of contemporary art exhibitions. But what practices does it refer to exactly, and why has this Anglicism come to supplant the term ‘commissariat’ in the French language? Answering these questions is not simply a matter of highlighting the role played by artists, museum curators, authors and exhibition ‘makers’ in the revival of the exhibition field from the 1960s-1970s onwards. The idea behind this book is that curating, far from being a recent phenomenon, relates to earlier and successive (r)evolutions, both in the field of hanging and scenography and in the professional and institutional sphere in which exhibition organisers operate. Since the mid-nineteenth century, curatorial activity has passed into the hands of an ever-increasing number of protagonists, and now oscillates between hyper-professionalisation and increasingly tangible deprofessionalisation. In fact, it would seem that nowadays the profession - recognised as such - is within the reach of everyone, and in particular of those whom the author calls ‘curatorial outsiders’.

Professor of contemporary art history at the University of Liège. Her publications include "L'Artiste commissaire. Entre posture critique, jeu créatif et valeur ajoutée" (Éditions des archives contemporaines , 2014), "Art public et controverses. XIXe-XXIe siècles (CNRS Éditions, 2024) and, with François Mairesse, "L'Artiste et le Musée" (Culture & Musées, Actes Sud, 2016). Since 2017, she has directed the Musée d'art contemporain en plein air du Sart Tilman in Liège.

La Cambre at the Arles Drawing Festival

La jeune garde à l'honneur

La Cambre is taking part in the 3rd edition of the Festival du Dessin, to be held in Arles (France) from 12 April to 11 May 2025. A selection of works from the Drawing department will be on show as part of the exhibition ‘La jeune garde à l'honneur’.

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"Chaire à vif" - Art & Money

Affiche Chaire à vif Les questions de valeur en art

On the occasion of the 2024-2025 Chaire à vif devoted to ‘Art and Money’, La Cambre is joining forces with the ULB's Groupe de Recherche en Sciences des Arts et de la Culture (GRESAC) to pursue its reflections on the notions of market, value and investment in the world of art and creation.
Between the act of creation free of all constraints and the art object conceived as a product of financial investment, there are many areas of intersection and progressive nuance, both historically and in the contemporary context.
The complex relationship between art, which is supposed to be pure, and money, which is supposed to be impure, is made up of a thousand facets that are still often a blind spot in the context of art schools.
Yet questions of value, marketing, insurance and, quite simply, price are on everyone's mind as soon as creation becomes a profession and professional structuring is posed as a necessary issue for students and young alumni.

Wednesday 9 April 2025
Questions of value in art
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Nathalie Moureau, in dialogue with Anne-Sophie Radermecker

What are the multiple values that make up a work of art? How do the players in the art world work together to create value, and who ultimately decides the price? Is the artistic value of a work necessarily reflected in its market value, and vice versa? Starting with the now-famous Comedian, a banana taped to a wall by the artist Maurizio Cattelan and sold for $120,000 at the Art Basel fair in Miami in 2019, Nathalie Moureau (Université Paul-Valéry-Montpellier) and Anne-Sophie Radermecker (ULB) discuss the strategies of distinction and legitimacy in the contemporary art world. Using this polemical case study as a starting point, they also ‘peel back’ the mechanisms by which the price of works is determined, extending their analysis to other categories of artistic production in order to gain a better understanding of buyers' motivations and willingness to pay for certain characteristics.

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Affleurement Exhibition

Exposition Affleurement

‘Affleurement’ is a group exhibition resulting from an initial encounter between the practices and personal research of the Masters 2 students in the Printmaking and Printed Image workshop.

With: Nathan Bédon-Rouanet, Louise Cauchy, Jana Di Leva, Léo Gasiglia, Inès Guillén Coste, Dieuwke Raymakers

Before embarking on the final phase of their individual projects, the Master 2s in Printmaking and Printed Image will be giving themselves a space for dialogue, a place to experiment where their approaches intersect and intertwine. It's a meeting where affinity and complementarity open up new avenues, where exchange nourishes the material.

On the surface of paper, their practices are rooted in printing, while exploring other territories. The print is their starting point, the material their language, the research their path.

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"Presence of the past" Exhibition

Presence of the past

Six young artists from the Photography workshop are invited to create a counterpoint to the themes and photographs selected by The House of European History.

Coordination: Hervé Charles & Olivier Thieffry

The House of European History's 1st photographic exhibition, Presence of the Past - a European Album weaves a dialogue between past and present, exploring the way in which history infiltrates our daily lives, is re-enacted, commemorated or erased. In seven chapters, it reveals a kaleidoscope of memories and imprints: from historic sites that have become backdrops for our selfies to ceremonies of remembrance where the anonymous are honoured rather than the great generals; from impassioned re-enactments where history is brought to life in period costumes to statues that have been dismantled, relics of a past that needs to be re-examined. Even nature becomes a memory, slowly covering the scars of time, while anonymous collectors dig, gather and weave links between the ages.

In this fresco, in which photography captures the shadows of bygone days, six young artists from La Cambre offer their perspective, that of a generation searching for meaning in the face of a heritage that is sometimes cumbersome, sometimes inspiring. Through their works, history becomes intimate, sensitive and vibrant. Along the way, the public are invited to become archaeologists of their own memory.


Photography: Romane Iskaria©

Open doors 2025

Portes ouvertes 2025

La Cambre opens its doors to you on Saturday 22 March 2025, from 10am to 6pm.

OPEN, to discover the different workshops and courses.
OPEN, to meet the teaching staff, enrolment officers and management.
OPEN, to take part in exhibitions, openings and workshops...

+ More info soon to come soon...

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Alumnis manibus Exhibition

Affiche Alumnis Manibus

With: Isabel Baraona, Maud Brunstein, Sam Bouffandeau, Xavier Duffaut, Matilde Gazeau Frade, Felix A. D’Haeseleer, Sophie Holmström, Romane Iskaria, Jana Katanic, Maelle Luca-le Garrec, Oya, Célia Rancelot, Killian Ryan, Alba Suau et Maj-Britt Verheijen Van Dyck

In the jargon of higher education, ‘alumni’ refers to all graduate students who left school recently or many years ago. Etymologically, this Latin adjective referred to all those, children or disciples, who were nourished (lat. alere) by their alma mater, their foster mother. For this exhibition, the term 'Alumni.ae' is associated with the notion of manes, which means ‘souls of the dead, ghosts, tutelary shadows’. Roman tombstones often bore a Latin dedication in the dative, Dis Manibus, hoping to attract the benevolence of these ‘geniuses’ of the past.

Alumni are no longer just students or former graduates. They are the ghostly witnesses of a fertile rhizome, a subtle, rich and surprising network that shapes the identity and raison d'être of an artistic powerhouse like La Cambre.

The Alumnis Manibus event brings together eight artists graduating in 2023 and winners of the ASBL des Amis de La Cambre prize. Each year, this jury, after a careful visit to the Graduate Show (exhibition of Master's degrees) and lengthy deliberations, decides to support certain projects deemed remarkable.

This year, to showcase the progress of their work two years after graduating, the idea was born to offer them the opportunity to invite another artist who is a member of the school's community. This invitation was intended to be open, with no strict instructions. As an alumnus of fifteen years, I imagined that this freedom would give rise to a variety of responses, reflecting the many possibilities offered by our Alma Mater...

Some of the pairings came about naturally, through personal affinity. Alba Suau and Killian Ryan invited Celia Rancelot (painting), Oya invited Sam Bouffandeau (engraving and printed images) and Maëlle Lucas-le Garrec invited Sophie Holmström (drawing). After two years apart since graduating from the school, these artists have seized the opportunity to reunite with their favourite partners. Having come from the same workshops, these dialogues bear witness to common paths, shared experiences and the birth of friendships.

Other duos were formed around a formal or thematic approach. These include Majbritt Verheijen Van Dyck (Interior Architecture) and Xavier Duffaut (Engraving and Printed Image), and Jana Katanic (Visual and Graphic Communication) and Romane Iskaria (Photography). Coming from different workshops and different graduating classes, they discovered each other's work through exhibitions organised by the school or on the Brussels scene. Although the artists didn't know each other personally, their work nevertheless has a powerful dialogue. Jana Katanic and Romane Iskaria both explore the issue of highlighting a specific community or territory. Xavier Duffaut echoes the work of Majbritt Verheijen Van Dyck. Their small sculptures of misappropriated objects question our relationship with urban space, oscillating between delicacy and unease.

Finally, a final type of encounter was revealed through these invitations: that of decisive transmission. Maud Brunstein (Textile Design) invited Félix A. D'Haeseleer (Professor of Colour), and Mathilde Gazeau Frade (Book and Paper Design) invited Isabel Baraona (Painting). These intergenerational pairings are a reminder of the decisive influence of encounters on an artist's career. For Mathilde Gazeau Frade, it was her meeting with Isabel Baraona that triggered her entry into La Cambre, fifteen years after the latter. For Maud Brunstein, it was the colour classes given by Félix A. D'Haeseleer that nurtured and consolidated her unique approach to textiles.

Lola Meotti, executive curator.

Positions to be filled

Attached are the profiles of the vacancies (published in the Moniteur belge 2025). The call is open from 4 to 20 March 2025, for teaching and administrative staff.

To apply, please follow the instructions in circulars no. 9450 (teaching staff) and no. 9449 (administrative staff).

#Jobs
#LaCambre

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Yearbook 2024

Yearbook 2024

Since 2018, ENSAV La Cambre has been publishing an annual yearbook showcasing the work of its young graduates.

In this 2024 edition, no fewer than 129 young artists and designers reveal their work and intersect across twenty disciplinary fields. More than ever, La Cambre presents the result of a fertile, exploratory, and uninhibited creative approach, far beyond a singular attachment to a specific discipline or departments.

Publisher: Benoît Hennaut
Editorial coordination: Laura Linder & Sabrina Lefrançois
Translation: Patrick Lennon
Graphic design: Atelier AMB/Mateo Broillet
Lithography: Mateo Broillet & Kamand Ravazi
Photo credits: Jorre Janssens, Luca Nuvolone, Camille Poitevin and Kamand Ravazi

Mazaccio & Drowilal

Affiche MP 45 Mazaccio & Drowilal

Elise Mazac aka Mazaccio (1988) and Robert Drowilal (1986) are two French artists working under the name Mazaccio & Drowilal.
Influenced by conceptual art, Pop painting and the Pictures Generation, their para-photographic work is based on the principle of ‘collimage’.
Their work tackles a range of subjects including celebrity, branding and identity.

In 2013, the duo won the 3rd BMW residency at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce. In 2017, they were residents at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York.
Their work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Les Rencontres d'Arles (2014), the French Institute, New York (2015), Les Abattoirs, Toulouse (2018), the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Chaux-de- Fonds (2021), and group exhibitions at Galleria Continua, Les Moulins, the Musée Nicéphore Niépce and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
They have also published a number of artist's books, including Wild Style (Camera, 2014), Champagne (RVB Books, 2015), The Happiness Project (RVB Books, 2018), Paparazzi (RVB Books, 2021), and Iconology (RVB Books, 2024).
They are visiting lecturers at the Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland.

With their research project entitled ‘Paravent Pictures’, Mazaccio & Drowilal are among the winners of the 6th edition of the Institut pour la photographie's research and creation support programme, devoted to the historical, theoretical or creative study of video walls.

As artists, Mazaccio & Drowilal are interested in what forms the backdrop to our lives: the images produced by consumer society, their abundance and the ways in which they are disseminated.
What narratives do they convey? How do they shape our visions of the world and our identities? To explore the notion of the wall of images, they are using the screen as an object of experimentation. Drawing on a range of disciplines, from art history and visual studies to anthropology, psychoanalysis and communication theories, they look at the making of icons and role-models, as well as the concepts of persona and extimacy that are intrinsically linked to them.

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"Chaire à vif" - Art & Money

Affiche Chaire a vif Nympheas Février

On the occasion of the 2024-2025 Chaire à vif devoted to ‘Art and Money’, La Cambre is joining forces with the ULB's Groupe de Recherche en Sciences des Arts et de la Culture (GRESAC) to pursue its reflections on the notions of market, value and investment in the world of art and creation.

Between the act of creation free of all constraints and the art object conceived as a product of financial investment, there are many areas of intersection and progressive nuance, both historically and in the contemporary context.

The complex relationship between art, which is supposed to be pure, and money, which is supposed to be impure, is made up of a thousand facets that are still often a blind spot in the context of art schools.

Yet questions of value, marketing, insurance and, quite simply, price are on everyone's mind as soon as creation becomes a profession and professional structuring is posed as a necessary issue for students and young alumni.

  • wednesday 12 february 2025
    ‘Investment issues in art’ Adriano Picinati di Torcolo
    Kim Oosterlinck (ULB-MRBAB), in conversation with Anne-Sophie V. Radermecker (ULB)
    The evolution of an artist's price can have a decisive influence on his or her career. In particular, price trends depend on demand, part of which is linked to investment in art. It is therefore important for artists to gain a better understanding of the process of financialisation of the art market, especially as works of art have characteristics that complicate their valuation as investment goods. In concrete terms, who are art investors, and how does art differ from traditional investment goods? Under what conditions does art become a financial asset? Are the profits solely monetary and do they accrue solely to the investor? Are all art forms suitable for investment? What are the advantages/risks of a meteoric rise in popularity? Are investment and social impact compatible? Adriano Picinati di Torcello and Kim Oosterlinck tackle these questions to find out, among other things, whether art is a ‘good investment’ and how artists can position themselves in relation to the monetisation of their work.

  • Wednesday 9 April 2025
    ‘Questions of value in art'
    Nathalie Moureau, in dialogue with Anne-Sophie Radermecker
    What are the multiple values that make up a work of art? How do the players in the art world work together to create value, and who ultimately decides the price? Is the artistic value of a work necessarily reflected in its market value, and vice versa? Starting with the now-famous Comedian, a banana taped to a wall by the artist Maurizio Cattelan and sold for $120,000 at the Art Basel fair in Miami in 2019, Nathalie Moureau (Université Paul-Valéry-Montpellier) and Anne-Sophie Radermecker (ULB) discuss the strategies of distinction and legitimacy in the contemporary art world. Using this polemical case study as a starting point, they also ‘peel back’ the mechanisms by which the price of works is determined, extending their analysis to other categories of artistic production in order to gain a better understanding of buyers' motivations and willingness to pay for certain characteristics.

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Meeting Point 44 Anna Saint-Pierre

Affiche Meeting point 44 Anna Saint Pierre

On the initiative of the Design Textile workshop

Designer Anna Saint Pierre works on building sites to try to preserve what is about to disappear. Her approach consists of collecting and reusing demolition materials on site to integrate them into future buildings in a different form. In 2022, she defended a design thesis entitled ‘Textiliser la mémoire bâtie’, prepared at ENSADLAB and developed with the architectural firm SCAU and its projects, enabling her to put her experiments to the test on site. Some of his current research takes the form of artistic interventions in the public space, such as the 1% artistic contribution to the future Ateliers Médicis building.

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I'm so borg

I'm So Borg all infos with logo

Presentation of the Artistic Sound Creation and Experimental Music Course

With proposals from Charlotte Barreyre, Sam Boisbineuf, Marilou Dard, Dima Emelianenko, Adèle Fisch, Marius Herbert, Raphaël Humbert-Martin, Justine Jossen, Seza Lebars, Coline Lebeau, Mopsa Marciano, Léo Marybrasse, Dan Meyer, Nathan Pierard, Joseph Vincent, Sebastian Voigt.

All the pieces were composed as part of the CASO (Cours Artistiques de Soutien aux Options) in Sound Creation and Experimental Music, in collaboration with Q-O2.

This CASO provides students with a privileged framework for listening, experimenting and reflecting on sound-related issues, observed through the prism of body/computer relations. Taking as its starting point the ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ (Donna Haraway, 1985), the course invites students to consider sound as a language, to imagine a cyborgian language, enabling communication between beings, whether humans, machines, pigeons or stones. It offers an intensive and comprehensive introduction to the arts and techniques of sound, suitable for beginners and experienced performers alike.

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Meeting Point 43

Affiche MeetingPoint 43 L’art public a l epreuve de la censure

‘Public art put to the test by censorship

by Julie Bawin, Professor of the History of Contemporary Art at the University of Liège and Director of the Musée d'art contemporain en plein air du Sart Tilman.

By imposing itself on the community as a whole, and thus confronting a plurality of judgements and opinions, the work of public art is, more than any other instituted creation, the object of tension and rejection. From the nineteenth century to the present day, works commissioned for public spaces have been censored both vertically and horizontally, both by the State and its spheres of power and by individuals from civil society. Julie Bawin invites us to take a look at the history of censorship in the public space, with the aim of showing the variability and permanence of the arguments that, from decade to decade, have been put forward to challenge, ban or dismantle works that were intended to meet with the approval of the greatest number of people.

In 2024 Julie Bawin published Art public et Controverses XIXe-XXIe siècle (Paris, CNRS Éditions).

Julie Bawin is a professor of contemporary art history at the University of Liège and director of the Musée d'art contemporain en plein air du Sart Tilman. Specialising in the study of curating, in 2014 she published a reference work on L'artiste commissaire.

Her current work focuses on the history of curating, public art and the musealisation of performance art.

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Absolutely Fragile

Affiches CASO Performance et art du corps

Presentation of the work of CASO students Performance

With Paul Brumberg I Yuna Choi I Romain Clary I Stav Friedman I Giulia Giordano I Maël Keppenne I Camille Laffargue I Ana Malnar I Julia Pakuszewska I Oliwia Pakuszewska I Luca Valentino

The ‘Performance and Body Art’ art course looks at the use of the individual as material for the work and the performing body. Coordinated by Antoine Pickels, this workshop is aimed at all students wishing to develop performative strategies within their own artistic practice, whether they be live, intended to find a visual, sound or spatial transcription, or linked to the creative process.

Meeting Point 42 Kyiv Metro Fonts

Affiche Meeting point 42 Kyiv Metro Fonts MB

Echoing the events of the Second World War, in 2022 the Kiev metro will become a fallout shelter for thousands of people, marking a new fragment of history.

Integrated into the architecture of the stations, the lettering of the Kiev metro reveals the memories of the city. This typographic heritage inspired the Kyiv Metro Fonts research project, which led to the publication of the KTF Metro typeface family. This project aims to preserve the typographic memory of Kiev, reviving historic letterforms while serving to raise funds for Ukraine.

A meeting, a rendezvous, a meeting place, a gathering space: with MeetingPoint, La Cambre encourages exchanges around a guest who is visiting a studio and who gives us the pleasure of an open talk. On Monday 20 January 2025, the typography workshop invites designer Yevgeniy Anfalov. Born in Kiev in 1986, he is co-founder of Kyiv Typefoundry. A meeting not to be missed.

Space Oddity Exhibition

Space Oddity

This exhibition by the Masters of the Atelier Sculpture takes as its impetus David Bowie's famous title, to evoke the place in which the event takes place, but also as a potential metaphor for the artistic process that generates fictions, points of view, oddities, escapes, disorientations, overtaking, accidents, controls...

All of the proposals, some of which are conceived in situ, are multidisciplinary, with a concern for space.

With: Charlotte Barreyre, Tanguy Danjou, Bruno D'Hubert, Eve Julia Gonzalez, Leo Marybrasse, Lyriane Renault, Elliott Schott, Vittoria Toscana, Joseph Vincent.

In partnership with Young European Artists

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Matthieu Blazy appointed Artistic Director of Chanel

Matthieu Blazy

Chanel has announced the appointment of Matthieu Blazy as artistic director of fashion activities for the French luxury fashion house, responsible for the haute couture, ready-to-wear and accessories collections.
Matthieu Blazy trained at La Cambre's atelier Stylisme, parures et accessoire, from which he graduated in 2007.

After a spell at a Catholic boarding school in the countryside, then a military school in England, Matthieu Blazy finally found his calling at La Cambre. During his studies, he took his first steps in the luxury goods industry with an internship at Balenciaga and then at John Galliano. In 2006, at the ITS competition for young talent, Matthieu met designer Raf Simons, now co-creative director of Prada. Simons became his mentor, and Matthieu began designing Simons' men's collections. Four years later, he moved to Margiela's artisanal haute couture line, where he began to deconstruct and play with materials. In 2014, he joined Céline to work on the pre-collections and hone his sense of detail. From 2016 to 2029, he was director of women's ready-to-wear at Calvin Klein. In 2020, he joined Bottega Veneta as director of ready-to-wear design. In 2021, his name became unavoidable, and he was appointed artistic director. In less than two years, he transformed the Italian fashion house into one of the most desirable brands of its time.

In an interview with the New York Times in 2021, Raf Simons - now co-creative director of Prada - described Matthieu Blazy as a ‘genius at human relations’ and a creative mind not afraid to experiment.

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Montée de fièvre Exhibition

Visuel Montée de fièvre

‘Montée de fièvre’ is a presentation exercise by students in the Drawing and Painting workshops.

Coordination: Aleksandra Chaushova & Émeline Depas in cooperation with Gijs Milius

Artists

Apolline Bachet Helena Berg Marilou Dard Benjamin Estermann Raphaël Humbert-Martin Anahita Judaki Quentin Kobia Ana Malnar Thaïs Marquet-Ellis Juliette Martens Siméon Muth Mélissai Lenain Alexandre Lebigot Lysandre Piveteau

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Julian Klausner succeeds Dries Van Noten

Julian Klausner

Dries Van Noten announces its successor: Julian Klausner, a graduate of the Fashion Design workshop at La Cambre - École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels.

It's a new chapter for Dries Van Noten. Following the retirement of its emblematic founder (a member of the legendary ‘Big Six’) last June, the house has chosen Julian Klausner as his successor. Trained at La Cambre, the École nationale supérieure des arts visuels in Brussels, from which he graduated in 2016, the 33-year-old designer completed internships at Thom Browne and Kenzo, then moved on to Maison Margiela before joining Dries Van Noten.

I am absolutely thrilled to be overseeing the coming seasons as we begin the next chapter of this house. Dries' unparalleled legacy is monumental and an inexhaustible and invaluable source of inspiration.
Julian Klausner.