Last week, members of Archivorum (Christianna, Rossana, and I, Stephen being in New York), representatives from Galleria Continua and the Fondazione Ratti, former CSAV resident artists, and three emerging artists gathered in Belgium. Over the course of two days, the discussions revolved around a central theme—you guessed it—archives. These 48 hours were filled with encounters, discussions, and presentations. To provide a digestible account, I will focus on the first day, while Christianna will cover the second in her forthcoming article. Naturally, my perspective shapes this narrative, highlighting what particularly caught my attention, but I will strive to remain comprehensive.
February 27th, 2025. With coffee in hand, we set off by taxi around 9:00 AM—thanks to a train strike—toward Berlinde De Bruyckere’s studio in Ghent. Ghent, a charming city, greeted us under a grey sky with intermittent rain and a sneaky wind. I was already familiar with Berlinde’s work, having first encountered her captivating sculptures the previous year at Galleria Continua Les Moulins. Her art is deeply fascinating, best described through the concept of attraction-repulsion: standing before one of her sculptures, you feel a mix of disgust, disturbance, and an odd pull of attraction. This tension, never fully resolved, lingers throughout her work, which, in my view, is its core strength. Born in 1964, Berlinde has spent over two decades developing a sculptural practice of striking intensity. Her work delves into the vulnerability of the body, the memory of trauma, and its material traces. It embraces a (hyper)organic materiality—wax, wood, textiles, animal hides—creating unsettling hybridizations of human and animal, presence and absence.
After a second coffee, some pastries, and a round of introductions—it was the first time the entire group was finally together—we had the privilege of meeting Berlinde herself. She generously welcomed us into her spaces of creation: three remarkable studios housed in a former boys' school. This visit was not incidental; Berlinde is an artist who works intimately with archives, meticulously gathering image fragments in carefully preserved boxes.
Before delving into her archival practice and those specific boxes, a word on the space itself: the cold seeped through the walls, the silence was absolute—Berlinde confided that she never works with music. Around us, glass domes, dozens of wax-stained pots, twisted metal wires, worn blankets deliberately aged, molds, collaged images taped to the walls, and machinery evocative of an alchemist’s laboratory. It felt like stepping into the backstage of her practice—perhaps that’s precisely what it was?
In a voice both composed and quietly fervent, Berlinde guided us through the inner mechanics of her creative process. Sensitive to visual memory, she clings to impactful images, drawing from them an intimate substance that nourishes her sculptures. As Lorenzo Benedetti aptly remarked, while we sipped yet another coffee, Berlinde’s walls evoke Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas: a constellation of images—Romanesque sculptures, reliefs, fragmented statuary—layered into an associative network of visual dialogue and inspiration.
Berlinde’s archive, however, extends beyond these walls. She preserves a collection of images in archival boxes, each one meticulously wrapped in tissue paper. From medieval statuary to Polaroid photographs, these images function as triggers for her creative process—“companions on the road,” as she poetically described them. But beyond the personal archive, Berlinde adopts a rigorous method of documentation: stacks of binders house press clippings referencing her work, negatives and slides, as well as a substantial collection of studio photographs.
I was particularly drawn to the materials Berlinde employs. As we moved through her workspaces, I found myself more captivated by the tools and raw materials than by the finished pieces themselves. This focus on materiality is not incidental; it aligns with the approach Nil and I have chosen for her book. What materials does an artist work with? How do they shape the practice? Materiality, in this context, extends to the body itself: how does an artist’s environment affect their body, and by extension, their work? Berlinde’s practice is deeply rooted in materiality—animal hides, medieval wood, wax, textiles, and paper are manipulated and hybridized with precision. I will keep this visit in mind while writing…
Following this immersive visit, we made our way to a small café nearby for a well-earned lunch—homemade sandwiches, steaming hot soup, and equally homemade desserts, the perfect fuel to continue the day. We then left Ghent by taxi, heading straight to Bozar, The Centre for Fine Arts of Brussels, where Berlinde’s first solo exhibition in Brussels, Khorós, was on view. The contrast between these two visits was striking: after stepping into the intimate spaces of her creation, we now encountered her work in the structured context of a public, institutional exhibition—a reversal that made the experience all the more compelling.
Khorós marks the first major presentation of Berlinde De Bruyckere’s work in Brussels. Her practice revolves around the human condition, drawing from Christian iconography, classical mythology, Flemish Old Masters, and cultural narratives. These references are recontextualized through a contemporary lens, engaging with the violence that permeates our time, the imagery of global suffering, but also the potential for beauty and transformation. At Bozar, De Bruyckere revisits 25 years of practice, tracing the exchanges she has cultivated with artists across disciplines and historical periods. “What I love most,” she explained during a presentation to the Bozar team, “is working in dialogue—being in relation with people, attuned to what is happening around me. I didn’t want a retrospective, but why not revisit the dialogues? Who has played a crucial role in my work? Who has helped shape my universe and language?”
In all honesty, I would need a second visit to fully grasp all the layers of his exhibition, but I recommend it to discover the artist's work. The parallel with Pasolini's work is very strong (she pays close attention to the actors’ postures, their corporeality—bodies touching, limbs stretching, intertwining), and the exhibition sensitively returns to the artist's interest in animals, and specifically in horses.
Finally, the evening culminated in a generous dinner at the museum restaurant—an ending as rich as the day itself. 🥂
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