Projects

L’art du pliage is a small collection of collages on Polaroids. I am trying to overlap familiar elements on top of the scenery I am now immersed in. But all I have around me are other unfamiliar constructs. I build my liking of my new home on the resentment I nurture for my home country. How healthy can it be? It’s only through other people’s gaze, a friendly gaze, that I can see why I’m here. L’art du pliage was featured in the KIOSK’s Lines of Flight e-zine (2nd issue).

Nizhónígo Yííkado We Walk in Beauty – The Zine For the project Nizhónígo Yííkado We Walk in Beauty taking place in Belgium between November 17th and December 18th 2022, Valentina Bianchi and Laura Eva Meuris curated and designed a zine.

The Consolation of Water Lilies Zine     A zine was compiled during the workshop “The Consolation of Water Lilies” held in Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp on July 18th, 2022 as part of the artistic program “Bodies of Work” by Curatorial Studies KASK. The participants were shown video works by Eva Giolo, Eva L’Hoest, and Mélanie Peduzzi and excerpts of texts by authors such as Silvia Federici, Astrida Neimanis, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Sophie Lewis. Inspired by these inputs the participants were then encouraged to produce their own contributions. The final product is a collection of impressions and reflections on the themes of motherhood, pregnancy, gestation, reproduction, and care.   You can flip through the zine on Issuu at this link.    

The Consolation of Water Lilies 28-31.07.2022 What does it mean for bodies of water to hold other bodies of water? Should this holding and gestating be considered forms of labor? In what ways can the experience of maternity be lived today? The workshop explores the environmental significance of motherhood and the political ramifications of gestation. Through the reading of relevant texts, the screening of video works by Eva Giolo, Eva L’Hoest, and Mélanie Peduzzi, the participants will be invited to reflect upon contemporary questions about pregnancy and caregiving, and share their own experiences. In the following days, the remnants of the workshop will be displayed together with the three aforementioned films.   “Océan” by Mélanie Peduzzi, 15”, 2022 “Women with each other share or forget to share. Every birth is different. I will show you mine. Making this video object was essential for me. On the one hand, to move forward, but also to remember. And most importantly to share a story of this experience that often leaves women with amnesia.” – Mélanie Peduzzi about her work Mélanie Peduzzi (Brittany, 1989) is a Belgian artist, graduated from ENSAV La Cambre in 2013, who works between writing, performance and photography. She…

built in the midst 14-24.07.2022 ‘built in the midst’ explores similarities, repetition, and differences in a magical constellation of references. The elements of the installation function as sculptures, feelings, or contexts, according to the physical position of the observer. The visitor is therefore guided in the chapel in a constantly renovated discovery of various levels of visibility. Hamed Dehqan’s practice is based on personal studies and research around phenomena of language and perception, engaging in a studio-based practice that creates a unique formal language through sculptural installations, multi-dimensional spatial drawings, and paintings. He is a visual artist currently studying advanced studies and practice-based research in the visual arts as a resident at the HISK Academy in Ghent (2022-2023). His work has been shown at 3-Platform, Tehran, Iran, CalArts Expo, California, USA,  Lona Galeria, São Paulo, Brasil. In 2016, he started the Pansion Project, an art project space. He has also worked as a writer in collaboration with art magazines. The exhibition is the third installment of Bodies of Work, a summer program of exhibitions and events that unfolds in the chapel of Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp. Organized by the Curatorial Studies postgraduate at KASK & Conservatorium.       With…

un(common) grounds 14 – 29.05.2022   (un)common grounds is a collaboration between iMAL, Werktank and Overtoon, featuring past and present residents, curated by Josue Aliendre Carvani, Natalia Barczyńska and Valentina Bianchi. Inspired by the common trajectories between all three platforms which focus on research, experimentation, and processes; the exhibition takes as its framework the different states of creation and their subsequent transformations, emerging in three parallel and overlapping paths.   The first, ‘TESTING GROUND’, represents an opportunity for experimentation. The artists, Laurie-Anne Jaubert and Stijn Wybouw are free to modify their existing works and present them in multiple moments and in different modalities throughout the duration of the exhibition. Collaboration and reciprocal responses are inevitable and could also involve the rest of the grounds; sounds disperse and vibrations resonate in the exhibition, erasing confines. Such an everchanging environment allows the visitors to experience the artworks in diverse ways, according to the potential appearance and temporary attitude of the artists as well as their own preferences.   The second, ‘GROUND OF PRESENCE’  incorporates works that revolve around the alteration of perception in the spectators, by manipulating their senses for example through the phenomenon of synaesthesia. By referring to the contexts of the…

Map#130 — I cannot translate, I cannot send either I cannot translate, I cannot send either is MAP #130 master project at K.A.S.K. by Teodora Oita and Kei Sendak, curated by Valentina Bianchi.   Valentina: You used Artificial Intelligence to produce some of your work, feeding it figures of speech and phrases to create new, nonsensical ones (for example: “Music outside the realm of the alphabet is charged with fear.”) or to create uncanny images. What are the advantages of relinquishing control over the process? Teodora: AI gave me very surprising turns of phrases, a lot of which I wouldn’t have come up with myself, some of them surprisingly poetic. But working with it also made me more conscious about how we as humans interpret (nonsensical) language as opposed to an algorithm’s interpretation of it. I used that to my advantage to curate and edit the AI’s output in order to get the most uncanny phrases. The work subverts the expectations by design (literally) — i.e. because the used sentences are grammatically correct, we might expect them to make sense on some level. Exploiting the viewer’s expectation of design conveying a clear message only sharpens the tension between form and…

Untitled (What if curiosity brings us to new places?) Untitled is one of the contributions to the parallel program to Radiant Nights #3 at De Singel in Antwerp on 18.02.2022 realized by Valentina Bianchi, Rebecca Fokkema, Amanda Hakoköngäs, and Janneke Slaets.       What if curiosity brings us to new places?  While walking through these oversized hallways that connect the different zones of the site like distant islands, visitors might have not noticed a series of still bodies occupying spaces within the building, forgotten, alienated. These non-spaces are leftovers, monstrous portions of a seemingly rational construction. The minimal actions by the artists pointed at these unseen locations, that suddenly became the semi-hidden stages where bodies would appear, haunt, and suggest a different purpose. The aim of the artists seems to have been to “unlearn the usual use of architecture”. These not-yet-investigated spaces became the subject of an attention to phantom-places, calling for unconventional bodily ways, altering the surroundings, and raising the curiosity for a becoming-unknown building.

Satogokoro    Satogokoro (nostalgia) is contribution #72 to “Abbi cura di te” (Curate yourself). After three months of isolation, I got to see my boyfriend in person again. I photographed him in my garden after having applied dried flowers to his face. I had collected the flowers with this intent in mind in the same garden when the quarantine started. Most of these flowers were no longer in bloom at the time the photos were taken. To dry them I put them between the pages of a book called “Lost Japan”, which links the nostalgia for Japan to the nostalgia for my partner. “Abbi cura di te” (Curate yourself) was born with the intention of facing, in this critical, suspended moment, the centrality of visual culture and its sharing. The home silently, for years, has kept objects, images, sounds, transforming itself into a private collection of a potential imaginary museum where each one is the creative director.  

Visualizing the memory of this hand touching something   The 1M³ project in K.A.S.K. Ghent allows students to curate a vitrine with artist books from the collection of the Kunstenbibliotheek. Valentina Bianchi and Arno Huygens selected and curated the display of 1M³ (14.02.2022-25.04.2022): Visualizing the memory of this hand touching something. On 05.05.2022 a “handling moment” was organized to invite people to touch and generally interact with the books previously shown in the vitrine together with additional ones especially selected.   Reading is a physical act that leaves traces. While reading we exchange physical matter with the books, which will inevitably carry some of us with them. Not even the digitized versions are immune from the accidental retention of human trails. Some of the interactions that take place while reading are considered potentially harmful to the object and therefore limited. The rarer the artifact is the less accessible it would be made for the sake of its optimal conservation. In archives and libraries some people, like curators, are allowed to touch the books while others aren’t. Judgments about preservation, damage, and dirt are not always logical or practical ones but sometimes derive from social boundaries. Are curators’ and conservators’ bodies less…