[english]

Kunst & Zwalm is a biannual art route in the Zwalm region, organised by BOEM vzw. Like previous editions, we once again chose to work with an external team of curators. Both manoeuvre and nadine are professional actors in the cultural field of Flanders and Brussels. The choice to work with urban organisations is a conscious one: it increases our network and visibility and gives Kunst & Zwalm an important supra-local dimension.

The curators put 'water' at the forefront as a central theme, thus including a current social debate in the creation process of this edition. The 'idyllic' landscape co-curates: the focus on the artist as an individual and as a human being is shifted this year towards 'water'.

Collectively, we ask ourselves the question:

How can art co-curate an awareness of the reality of a landscape? How can art highlight the (invisible) reality of a seemingly idyllic landscape?

The selection of artists and collectives is already behind us and was done on the basis of their practice, sensitivity to the subject and the way they want to work with, and experience in situ projects.

The theme of this edition is water, so the route runs largely along the Zwalm River.

The narrative landscape of the Flemish Ardennes forms the canvas, so to speak, on which the participating artists set to work. They reflect on the history and future of water in the broadest sense of the word. The public goes for a walk in the valley of the Zwalm and experiences the artistic stories, statements and reflections on water, which it finds scattered along its path.

The route starts at the Zwalm Tourist Information Point, Rekegemstraat 26, 9630 Zwalm.

The length of the route is about 5 km. We recommend completing the route on foot.

The route is accessible for wheelchairs and buggies.

8pm-10pm
An evening walk with curators and some participating artists (start at Restaurant De Zwalmmolen).
During the walk, we will visit an installation work by Denitsa Todorova installed on the route for this occasion. The evening walk will end with a concert by Amber Meulenijzer activating her sound installation.

Kunst en Zwalm is very easy to reach by public transport during this edition. Munkzwalm station is a 12minute walk (1 km) from the starting point in Rekegemstraat.

A bicycle shed is located next to the starting point, as well as a municipal car park.

Ada Van Hoorebeke
In her practice, Ada Van Hoorebeke (BE) works with craft techniques based on natural dyes, such as ceramics and batik. In her work, Ada explores ways to produce her own dyes using natural waste materials. Her installations, where sessions of textile dyeing, photo shoots and performances take place, provide a platform for exchange and collaboration. This aspect adds a performative layer to the work.
Ada collaborates with the platform manoeuvre.

Amber Meulenijzer
In her practice, Amber Meulenijzer (BE) explores the field of tension between sound and visual art. By combining banal tristesse with everyday amazement, intuition and a curiosity about the limits and flexibility of different materials, she creates work that is midway between theatre, cinematography and poetry. The role of silence and the spectator are given exceptional weight, playing with presence and absence.

Anna Raimondo
The work of Anna Raimondo (IT/BE) is a medium for encounters and exchanges. Her working method is flexible and variable, accepting the accidental and the unforeseen. A key strategy she employs in numerous works consists of interventions in public spaces to encourage encounters. This material feeds images, videos, radiophonic creations, and so on. Her feminist vision is repeatedly evident in all her work. The constant questioning of female identity constitutes a resistance to its confinement.

Buratinas & Caroline Daish & Emma Lee Harder & Mathilde Maillard
Caroline Daish (AU/BE) collaborates with artists in Europe and Australia on performances for film and theatre, specialising in voice. She has developed a trilogy of performance and sound works on the theme of intangibility and the notion of the soul in contemporary performance. In 2015, she started oracle, an improvisational practice that reads spaces through the voice, together with Michel Yang and Justine Maxelon. As part of the Buratinas Captains collective, she’s actively researching life on the waterways. http://oracleoracleoracle.com/
After several years in a contemporary dance company and training in visual arts, Emma Lee Harder (FR/BE) specialised in professional amateurism. Today, she covers different practices such as dance, singing, performance or techniques in the performing arts. In Brussels since 2021, she has collaborated with Julien Fournet (Amicale de production), Mathilde Maillard (club travail), Yvonne Harder, and Buratinas Captains.
Mathilde Maillard (FR/BE) is interested in the uncertainties of language and the (in)surmontable barriers of our intimacies as manifestations of our privileges and our social positions, but also as the possibility of understanding each other better when we manage to talk. She surrounds herself with pens, microphones, loopers machines, everyday objects and above all: people, to research this. Collaboration projects, amongst others, are Club Travail, l'Amicale de production, Buratinas Captains, etc.
Buratinas (LT) is a small solar-powered boat that nadine vzw (Brussels) makes available as a studio space for artists. Artists are invited, under the name Buratinas Captains, to explore the Belgian waterways and work with and in this specific landscape.

Does Van Dousselaere & Charlotte Peys
Does Vandousselaere (BE) studied performance art at KASK. He observes the world through the lens of economic and social rights and tries to intervene in this reality with movement, interventions and temporary constructions. Charlotte Peys (BE) is fascinated by drawing as a relational and performative tool. She sees it as potentially revealing underlying connections, unfolding spaces and places, weaving relationships and stretching the imagination.

Elen Braga
Elen Braga (BR/BE) is a multimedia artist interested in themes related to her human self. Her work explores notions of strength, ambition and resilience. Her practice builds on self-imposed tasks and sustained labour-intensive efforts. She delves into mythological stories and explores how they survive in contemporary behaviours and beliefs. 

Hiroko Tsuchimoto
Hiroko Tsuchimoto (JP/SE) is a visual artist based in Stockholm. Her participatory practices take place on stage, in public spaces and in in-between spaces. Her artistic work draws attention to traces and repetitions in everyday life. She interweaves stories of past, present and future, bringing them together in situational and physical contexts to form a collective, multilingual imagination.
Hiroko collaborates with the platform manoeuvre.

Homa Arkani
Homa Arkani (IR/BE) depicts her social concerns in her work. Her artworks attempt to transform sociopolitical issues into a poetic and visual form. She is inspired by Persian poetry, especially the poems of Sufi mystic Rumi (1207-1273). Her work incorporates what poetry means to her, from ‘self-understanding’ to ‘joyful living’. Her works aim to expand the viewer's imagination.
Homa collaborates with the platform manoeuvre.

Karel Thienpont
Karel Thienpont (BE) is a visual artist who files art and the art world and charts his own course through his often idiosyncratic paintings. Thienpont's work stems from an inimitable imagination and naive playfulness, entirely in the artistic tradition of the CoBrA movement and Naïve Art, among others.
Karel collaborates with the platform manoeuvre.

Maarten De Vrieze
Maarten De Vrieze (BE) worked in factories as an electromechanic and autonomous designer. Before becoming an artist, he travelled the world on his bicycle. After studying Autonomous Design at KASK Ghent, he collaborated with artists and collectives such as Cão & Xilogravura, Haider Al Timimi, Simon Allemeersch and LucindaRa. His quest as an artist focuses on the everyday 'being' of man within a larger whole. With artistic gestures, he makes tangible which dominant forms of power remain invisible and how this shapes society. His work includes film documentaries, public space interventions, exhibitions and scenography.

Merel Stolker
Merel Stolker (NL/BE) builds her art practice around human contact. Our relationships are something we often take for granted, so we rarely dwell on all the social rules and norms that shape our interactions unnoticed. As an artist, Merel conducts an ongoing investigation into social contact – questioning and deepening it. This manifests itself in a practice at the intersection of performance, visual art and social artistic work, always in co-creation with different participants.
Merel works together with manoeuvre, the Ghent platform for co-creative practices.

Tamara Van San
Tamara Van San (BE) is a visual artist who often produces sculptures and installations on a monumental scale. Freedom triumphs with Tamara. Organic forms in strong colours are created from plastic, ceramic, metal and other materials. Her visual imagery balances between formal abstraction, the recognisable and the unknown. Challenging forms seek a certain strangeness, deviating from the norm.

Various Artists
Various Artists is a fictional art collective with 24 members. Various Artists explores the sustainability of the artist as a brand. Their practice questions individual authorship through experiments with auto-generative art production and collective creation processes. With each project, Various Artists' research themes and artistic practices temporarily fuse into multimedia installations, often in collaboration with other artists.

Vermeir & Heiremans
The artist duo Vermeir & Heiremans (BE) defined their own house as a work of art, which became the basis for a long-term joint artistic practice since 2006. The 'house as artwork' functions as a framework to zoom in on concepts such as ownership, public goods and forms of governance. Their practice uses financial instruments, historical references and public walks as a performative method. Vermeir & Heiremans consider the art world as a microcosm for the dynamics developing in wider society. In their practice, they explore different scenarios for a redistribution of value and new forms of mutualisation. Vermeir & Heiremans are also co-founders of Jubilee, a platform for artistic research.

Denitsa Todorova
“Working almost exclusively with graphite on paper, Denitsa Todorova creates an abstract world of soft strokes in shades of black and grey. With a unique approach to her medium, she offers the viewer a veil, a passage to myriad possible meanings and dialogues, bound to trigger one’s imagination.”, Tamara Beheydt.