BRUSSELS.- BRAFA 2021 is happening!

In view of the restrictions and uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the BRAFA committee held a consultation with its members earlier this month which led to the decision to postpone the January 2021 fair until 2022.

Following this announcement, the organizers received countless messages of support and sympathy from exhibitors, partners, subcontractors and visitors. BRAFA remains a highly anticipated event – never once cancelled or postponed in its 65 years of existence! Buoyed by the feedback received, the BRAFA team immediately set to work to devise an alternative solution. Today, organizers announced that BRAFA will go ahead, just differently, modelled on a new concept: ’BRAFA @ HOME in the galleries’.

The idea is to invert the concept of the event. As visitors are currently unable to attend the fair, the organizers will bring the event to them! And who better to be the ambassadors of this reinvented BRAFA than the fair’s exhibitors? BRAFA 2021 will therefore go ahead as planned, but at the exhibitors’ galleries or exhibition spaces.




In practice, this means each participant will be invited to present an exhibition of the artworks and art objects they selected for BRAFA 2021 in their own gallery or home. They can choose to do this alongside another BRAFA exhibitor or alone. The only condition is that they must respect the same dates and times. The exhibitions will run from Wednesday 27 up to and including Sunday 31 January 2021, the dates the fair was originally scheduled to take place. Each participant will also be invited to produce a short, personalized video of his or her exhibition. All videos and photos featured in these videos will be posted on the BRAFA website and widely used to promote the event.

BRAFA will coordinate the entire operation and will take care of all promotion. The galleries will be invited based on the list of confirmed participants for BRAFA 2021.

As BRAFA Chairman Harold t’Kint de Roodenbeke explained: ‘More than anything else, we wanted to support the galleries with this project. Our event was created to offer art dealers and galleries an opportunity to showcase their treasures; a communication platform that would contribute to their livelihood and put their profession in the spotlight. This initiative, which is consistent with our mission, is geared towards generating encounters and welcoming visitors. The only difference is that this time, in view of the current health crisis, these encounters and visits will take place in the galleries. Our new proposal reflects our desire to support our partners through difficult times, as does our decision not to charge exhibitors for their participation in the initiative. BRAFA will finance the entire operation with the support of our partner Delen Private Bank. We are very grateful for their assistance in this. The coronavirus crisis has disrupted our habits, our way of life and how we work. I hope this new initiative demonstrates our flexible response to the unprecedented situation.’

The list of participating galleries will be published in the next few weeks. As BRAFA exhibitors hail from from twelve different countries, BRAFA @ HOME in the galleries will take place in various national (Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp or Knokke) and international venues (Paris, London, Amsterdam, Geneva, Barcelona, Milan, Frankfurt, …).

So in January 2021 you won’t have just one BRAFA to look forward to but a multitude of smaller BRAFAs in different cities!