“Dwelling in the world (…) is tantamount to the ongoing, temporal interweaving of our lives with one another and with the constituents of our environment.” Tim Ingold, “On Weaving a Basket”
Forms of Life explores the multiple resonances of a question animating all fields of contemporary creation, thought, and society: that of our relation to other forms of life, and the ways in which we inhabit the world. Our aim is to question the links that weave together the work of art and the world; images and the living; the forms that surround us and those we create – in other words, the fabric of life itself. The driving force of this project will be an exploration of the various meanings and transdisciplinary character of what we define as “forms of life” in the field of visual arts.
Forms of Life will unfold over the course of two years as a monthly seminar created as a time for exchange, reflection, reading, practice and encounters with international artists and thinkers from various disciplines. Several highlights will punctuate the project’s development, including a workshop in Venice during the summer of 2022 that will consider the city and its lagoon as a territory for reflection and artistic experimentation.
Forms of Life is developed by Tina Gillen (artist and teacher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp) and Christophe Gallois (curator, Mudam Luxembourg), and promoted by Guy Bovyn (Head of the Fine Arts programmes, Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp). It is organised by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in collaboration with Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, in the context of the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale.
(Image: Manuela Marques, ‘La Brassée’, 2017, pigment print on Baryta paper, 65 x 98 cm, Courtesy Galerie Anne Barrault, Paris)
