On March 22, the day of the coordinated terrorist attacks in Brussels, plans were well underway for the city’s annual art-fair week — one uneasy month away. This was the first year that the Independent chose the capital of the European Union (if not necessarily the European art world, which is divided between London, Paris, and Berlin, among other places) to expand into, adding its edgier offerings to those of the long-established Art Brussels fair, as it does in New York (where the Independent complements the Armory Show).
The “art world†draws from, in fact, the entire world: It’s international, borderless, cosmopolitan, and often gathers itself in great cities which we have seen have also been targets of terrorists (the November attacks in Paris happened to coincide with Paris Photo.) After it happened, local attendees and organizers I spoke with, said they had to do battle with perceptions from media coverage of the city, a need to defy the terrorists’ motives of disrupting daily life. Independent co-director Olivier Pesret, who, when pressed about the attacks’ impact on the timing of the fair, said, “The events were tough, but we immediately got on the phone with our 72 exhibitors and there were very few who felt uneasy. It’s not a war zone. The media was showing military in front of the courthouse — but they’re there year round! No exhibitors backed out. Two days after the attacks we had a dinner and instead of 80, we had 110 people show up.â€
A spirit of defiance was added to a spirit of seriousness about art which already existed. Brussels might not be the flashiest place in Europe, but there are other reasons for the art world to gather there. “Brussels was an obvious city for us,†said Pesret. “More or less 50 percent of our exhibitors come from Europe, and we wanted to be closer to home for them. At the same time we wanted to be able to attract our American audience to Europe outside of a city which they always know — Paris, London, etc. So we chose a city where we could have a positive impact, and Brussels has changed radically in a very good way. A lot of artists do residencies at the art center Wiels and then they stay because it’s inexpensive and central. In two hours you’re in all the major capitals. And you’re in a country that has been supporting the arts for centuries. It’s something that is really deeply ingrained in people here. The mentality goes alongside our core philosophy of supporting artists and galleries. In Brussels, it’s very easygoing and at the same time there’s a high quality of art. The collectors are serious — they really want to know more. It’s not an impulse buy.â€
During my stay in Brussels, I visited the the Poppositions fair, known for exhibiting emerging artists and galleries, and I asked this year’s director, Nicolas de Ribou, to discuss the effect of the recent attacks on the fair week — if any. He stated, ‘It’s a bit different now than one month ago, but we were aware that something would happen. We knew since November,†he said referring to Belgium’s lockdown in a manhunt for Paris terrorist-attack organizer Salah Abdeslam. “It’s the strangest feeling but once it happens you feel more comfortable. You know it will happen again — but not for a while. Belgian people are really not scared.â€
Others, such as the Iranian-born Brussels-based artist Sanam Khatibi, generally attributed the attacks to a problem in the lack of successful population integration and felt that more security would have little effect. Khatibi asserted, “I think what happened could have happened anywhere. It’s unfortunate that, yes, we have certain areas in Brussels where it turned out the attack planners were from those communities. There has always been integration problems. But unfortunately it’s a community that has difficulties integrating. And of course — the main issue is petrol and money. Our politicians have been bombing and doing all sorts of things in [Islamic] regions and people have been suffering for years. We haven’t been doing anything about it, so now they’re bringing it here. We get shocked about 135 people dying, but people are dying everyday. I had to leave my own country because of the same issues — it’s just different names and different people. Today, it’s here, but tomorrow it will be somewhere else.†Khatibi lives a ten-minute walk from the bombed metro station, Maalbeek — she heard military helicopters leading up to the attacks, which alerted her that an attack was imminent. “We’re all very sad, touched by it. But I’m not going to lock myself up because it happened. I don’t think the more military we put out the safer we are because if someone is willing to die to put off a bomb, it doesn’t matter. I don’t feel safer seeing 20 military guards.â€
Brussels is in an unprecedented position. The city’s fair attendees have a well-proven track record for supporting often quite edgy art which coexists with the city’s complicated (and in some ways troubling) political history. Out of this, it is today a polyglot international city which provides an undeniably unique breeding ground for idea exchange because of its accepted coexistence of cultural diversity and lack of ethnic (or even linguistic) dominance. In this sense, New York, London, Paris eclipse one another, at least partially, whereas Brussels’s art identity remains undetermined — allowing today’s multifaceted art worlds (not unlike Belgium’s many cultural populations) to potentially intermingle, freely, in uncharted territory outside of the direct influence of a major international metropolis. Art, in this light, would get its own city.
Below is a three-day photo diary of the artwork and conversations I encountered at the art fairs, local arts institutions, and artist studios.
I touch ground in Brussels Airport at 8 a.m. I’m expecting to spot evidence of the bombings — but they happened in the departure hall — and to encounter loads of armed military keeping an eye out (there are a few at the taxi line). But in actuality I feel not much different than arriving in Newark or LaGuardia, except for the noticeable scarcity of travelers.
At the main fair — Art Brussels (similar in size and emphasis to the Armory Show in New York) — the handmade and tactile moments stand out.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Prague-based Krištof Kintera’s spillage of light fixtures, in his solo presentation at D+T Project Gallery, Brussels.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
I meet with the fair’s managing director, Anne Vierstraete, in front of an untitled Gert & Uwe Tobias work at the Brussels-based Rodolphe Janssen booth. She states, “At the entrance of the fair are the most experimental — 30 galleries in the Discovery section. Then, the Prime section shows more established galleries. Compared to last year we had 34 newcomers even though we reduced the size overall by 50 galleries. We also added 24 solo shows. Then, the Rediscovery section shows works that have been underestimated — that we think should be reconsidered. We are among the three oldest fairs in the world, along with Art Basel and Art Cologne — it’s a very vibrant art scene.â€
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Vietnamese Dinh Q. Lê’s “poured†c-prints TWC in Four Moments at Shoshana Wayne Gallery (Santa Monica).
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
The playful and unexpected ceramics by Brussels-based Eric Croes at Rossi Contemporary (Brussels).
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
I make a pitstop at the MIMA, Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art, dedicated to street art and located in the region of Molenbeek (home of the Paris terrorist-attack planners). Pictured, Maya Hayuk’s installation City Lights on the museum’s second floor.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
In the museum’s basement, I encounter the work of
Swoon — the street artist brought into limelight in the ‘00s by arts dealer/curator extraordinaire Jeffrey Deitch. The artist was invited to take over in the museum’s raw cellar, and a scene of her pasted drawings appear at each turn, growing — it seems — on the columns, ceilings, and floor.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Next, I visit Poppositions nearby. Young Emerging Artists Eating and Fucking, a video by the New York-based Israeli duo Tamy Ben-Tor and Miki Carmi catches my eye with a character I imagine as the offspring of
Jordan Wolfson’s robot and a muse of Cindy Sherman.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Pictured, Robert Kunec’s sculpture Explosus.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
In the evening, I head to the city’s center for a dinner hosted by Independent Brussels at its permanent gallery space Independent Régence, which will host exhibitions year-round and which is separate from the much larger fair space. Pictured, co-director of Independent Brussels Olivier Pesret.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
During the afterparty at Cinema Galeries, I encounter artist/curator Matthew Higgs (at left) — founding creative advisor of the Independent fair in both New York and Brussels — and Tyson Reeder (right), artist and fair organizer of wildly alternative fairs such as the
2009 Dark Fair in Cologne — without any electricity.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Left to right: Scott Indrisek, editor-in-chief of Modern Painters; the painter Steven Cox; and London-based art-writer-turned-gallerist Coline Milliard of Carroll/Fletcher gallery.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Friday morning, I visit the studio of the Belgian artist Thomas Lerooy, who returned to his home country two years ago after living in Berlin for many years. He discusses with a visiting collector his sculpture The Beauty in the Shadow of the Stars which exhibited at Le Petit Palais in Paris. At the time, the museum’s collection was in storage while the building was undergoing restoration — which inspired him. “I thought: I want to make a piece that’s sleeping, resting, calm — not worrying about the problems that are always there. Also this idea that I’m restoring the piece with tape — a material that is temporary. This piece is still falling apart like we can’t help it somehow.â€
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Lerooy’s Embrace in the foreground.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Afterward, Rodolphe Janssen director Sybille du Roy invites me to the gallery where I re-encounter works by Eric Croes in the group show Made in Oven of ceramics along with some real gems by the Brooklyn-based artist Dan McCarthy (shown here), in a sea of foliage designed by Thierry Boutemy, a florist who frequently collaborates with artists.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Next, I meet with Dirk Snauwaert, the director of the relatively new art center Wiels residing in a former beer brewery of the same name and partly modeled after New York’s PS1 and New Museum. On view is the Belgian artist Edith Dekyndt’s retrospective Indigenous Shadow featuring many of her “living†sculptures such as a series of Ikea rugs embalmed with beer-brewing bacterial cultures — and, pictured here, a “rug†of dust that has been methodically collected from the museum’s floor.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
The arrival of the New York-originated Independent art fair in Brussels this year, in the spacious Vanderborght building, sets the stage for the city to evolve as an art-market hub.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
At the entrance are the ever-poised works by New York-based artist Carol Bove at David Zwirner (New York and London) with her newer ones incorporating bright color.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Wolfgang Betke’s Stylite’s Dreams at Berlin-based gallery Aurel Scheibler (Berlin).
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
CLEARING gallery’s (New York and Brussels) booth of works by Poughkeepsie-based Huma Bhabha.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Le Salon (Brussels), invited by Almine Rech Gallery (Paris, Brussels, London), organizes a cat-scratching headquarters including works by John M Armleder, Laurent le Deunff, Regina Maria Möller, and Amanda Ross-Ho.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Rachel de Joode’s wormhole-like works successfully combine the photographic with sculpture at Galerie Christophe Gaillard (Paris).
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
In the evening, per Jerry Saltz’s advice, I hightail it up to the Het Noordbrabants Museum for a chance of a lifetime to see Hieronymus Bosch: Visions of Genius in the master painter’s hometown, ‘s-Hertogenbosch — marking the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death. Nine years in the making, the exhibition hosts the largest and most unprecedented survey of Bosch works to date. Pictured, The Haywain Triptych, 1510-16.
Photo: EVERT ELZINGA/© Sarah Trigg
During the art fair week, the museum is open until 1 a.m. to accommodate as many timed tickets of visitors as possible before the exhibition heads to the Madrid’s Prado museum where the works will reunite with the masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights. Pictured here, Saint John the Baptist, c. 1490-95.
Photo: Mike Bink/© Sarah Trigg
Saturday morning, I visit the home studio of Iranian-born Sanam Khatibi, a painter who incorporates tapestries, embroidery, and clay works, into her oeuvre. Khatibi details the narrative of a painting in progress at left, “The male figures are coming back from a hunt. The female figure is waiting to greet them holding the head of the male figure behind her. There’s often an absence of the men in my paintings. We don’t know if it’s due to the animals or if there are no men any longer. It’s usually the women amongst themselves getting into all sorts of mischief. You don’t know if they are enjoying it or going through pain.â€
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
Khatibi states, “I’m a collector of things. The objects become sacralized and are part of my work. The theme I’m working on right now involves animality, loss of control, power games, dominance, sexuality, primitive instincts. There’s a lot of humor too. I love playing with titles.†Pictured at right is Khatibi’s “Whenever I dance for you I get into trouble†based on the 16th-century Flemish tapestry “The Return of the Hunt†— except that she replaced the male figures with female ones who have set the castle in the horizon ablaze. Other titles are: “My Garden is Wilder Than Yoursâ€; “I’m Running Away With Your Wifeâ€; and “To Save Her I Would Murder the World.â€
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
I finish up with a visit to La Loge, an alternative exhibition space for emerging art housed in a former Masonic temple, to see the group show Pastoral Myths. Pictured here are the works of the Ukrainian artist Olga Balema of found agricultural feeding troughs she painted with the brand colors of agricultural manufacturer John Deere.
Photo: Lola PERTSOWSKY
At left, a painting by Amelie von Wulffen; right, a looped eight-second film by Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel.
Photo: Lola PERTSOWSKY
The city’s center at dusk.
Photo: Sarah Trigg/© Sarah Trigg
