LEUVEN.- The multifaceted oeuvre of Valérie Mannaerts is rooted in intuition, material, and sensory experience. Through hybrid works, she questions the forms and properties of things and explores themes such as metamorphosis, identity, and the body, drawing upon feminist frameworks. Her work is layered, amorphous, and flexible. She investigates questions such as: What is the autonomy of an object? What story can an object tell? When do the organic and the inorganic interfere? Her work resists univocal interpretations as well as predetermined norms and boundaries. It remains in constant transformation and motion, balancing between representation and abstraction.

In the late 1990s, Mannaerts debuted with works on paper in which she examined her own body and sexuality. She followed in the footsteps of female artists from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Eva Hesse, and developed from the amorphous a distinctive and adventurous visual language. In 2003, Mannaerts represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale, together with artist Sylvie Eyberg. Afterwards, she gradually expanded her artistic practice to include sculpture.

Mannaerts explores sculptural vocabulary and its boundaries through a deep fascination with the notion of metamorphosis. When does an object become a sculpture? How does a sculpture relate to the pictorial plane, to space, and to the viewer? Here, sculpture does not manifest as a fixed object but as a process of ongoing transformation.

This focus on sculpture strengthened Mannaerts’ interest in architecture, spatiality, and the relationship to the human body. It resulted in installations, paintings, textile pieces, kimonos, functional objects, and projects in public-space that enter into direct dialogue with their surroundings.

In Antennae, Mannaerts reflects on thirty years of artistic practice while also presenting new work. The title refers to the antennae that insects use to explore their environment. On the other hand, it also serves as a metaphor for her own artistic sensitivity: how she forges subtle and complex connections between her world, her work, the viewer, and the exhibition space.

Across five galleries, a sharp and contemporary portrait of Mannaerts’ practice unfolds. The first gallery explores the tension between painting and sculpture. In the next space, the focus shifts to the human body—a body that can carry and generate meaning through the skin of clothing. The third gallery functions as a kind of outdoor space: a monumental woven garden that unfolds as a panorama of a personal place. In the final two rooms, the gaze turns inward again, towards the interplay between the private and the public. The exhibition culminates in a new installation in which Mannaerts probes the possible position of artistic practice today.

Curator: Valerie Verhack

A publication by Walther König Verlag will be released to coincide with Antennae.