Art & Ecology
Research class by Sina Hensel, Ligia Poplawska and Delphine Wibaux
What if you want to create novel relationships between things and people that were previously unrelated? What if you like to look, listen, feel, think, learn, play and create together? What if you dream of an art that brings forward a social impact in society?
The research class offered by the Art & Ecology research group is designed as a case study. During the four-day workshop, the Sint-Annabos at Linkeroever will be the starting point of very diverse explorations. The 96-hectare nature reserve functions as a buffer against fine dust and noise pollution, sandwiched between the Antwerp ring road, the port's industry and the city's residential areas. Management has changed greatly in recent decades, and its soil is heavily contaminated with PFOS.
Delphine Wibaux will take us into the field to connect us to our senses and study the forms of life and death that we can discover, understand and make sensitive along the Scheldt. Collective body exercises and movements will be proposed as an introduction to connect us to our senses, our attention, our perceptions and the joy of being together, here and now, like a game. This workshop serves as a gateway to question our sensitive perceptions of a chosen place, in relation to what is meant by scientific ecology - a science that studies the interactions between living things and the environment.
The fieldwork we conduct and the material we collect at Sint-Annabos will be the starting point for the various workshops and demonstrations that take place in the Eco Lab in the following days. Those workshops strive towards the notions of material memory and situated note-making while relying on the self-imaging capacities of the field site. Sina Hensel and Ligia Poplawska will lead an anthotype workshop whereas an anthotype is an impermanent photographic image created by the action of light on light-sensitive plant material. Together with Ronny Blust, a professor in biology, we will use the method of chromatography to visualize plant pigments and discuss their characteristics and functions. Further, we will edit the sound recordings taken in Sint-Annabos to create a sensorial soundscape composed of a multitude of voices, human and more-than-human.
with contributions by Ronny Blust and Roel Arkesteijn
(image: research class by Delphine Wibaux, 2023)
Sina Hensel
Sina Hensel is a visual artist and researcher with a special focus on critical colour practices which include the kaleidoscopic transformations caused by the current and future chemical make-ups of landscapes and environments. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe and Hamburg and in 2019 she graduated from HISK Ghent. Since 2019 she holds a research and teaching position at the Chair of Visuals Art at RWTH Aachen. Since 2021 she is also a researcher at FHNW School of Arts Basel, University of Art Linz, and KASK Ghent and since 2022 under Prof. Claudia Mareis at Humboldt-University Berlin. Hensel’s works have been shown at 18th La Biennale di Venezia/IT, M HKA Antwerp/BE, Beursschouwburg Brussels/BE, Albert van Abbehuis art center Eindhoven/NL, Cultural Center San Pedro de Atacama/CL and CIAP Kunstverein Genk/BE. Artistic residencies brought her to Villa Empain Brussels/BE, Hangar Barcelona/ES and Residency La Wayaka Current Atacama Desert/CL.
Sina Hensel is researcher at the Academy.
sina.hensel@ap.be
Ligia Poplawska
Ligia Popławska (°1994, Poland) is a photographer, visual artist and art historian based in Antwerp, Belgium. Fascinated by natural phenomena and more-than-human philosophies, her research-based projects explore the urgent ecological themes through speculative storytelling. Her current research looks at the impact of climate change on our senses and emotions. Popławska holds a Master’s and Bachelor’s Degree in Photography from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, having previously completed a Bachelor's Degree in Art History from the University of Gdańsk. She has received several awards, including Photography Prize by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (2020), PhMuseum Days Award (2021), Decade of Change Series Award 2022 by 1854 British Journal of Photography, and was nominated for Leica Oscar Barnack Award (2023). Popławska is a laureate of .TIFF 2022 and member of FUTURES Photography nominated by FOMU Fotomuseum Antwerpen, as well as a recipient of an Emerging Talent Grant from the Flemish Government. Ligia exhibited internationally at Bienal’23 Fotografia do Porto (Porto, solo), ENCONTROS DA IMAGEM (Braga, solo), FOMU (Antwerp), Valerie Traan Gallery (Antwerp), Helsinki Photo Festival, InCadaqués Photo Festival, among others. She works as a commercial photographer and cultural producer. Popławska has also taught photography at Jewellery Department, KASKA and curated photography platform Intimate Structures. Her work has been published in publications such as Fisheye Magazine, VOGUE Italia, AD Architectural Digest.
Ligia Popławska is researcher at the Academy.
ligia.popławska@ap.be
Delphine Wibaux
A 2014 graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Marseille, Delphine Wibaux's work has been shown at the Jeu de Paume (Paris), with the seminar See time coming, at the invitation of Jean-Christophe Bailly. She has also exhibited at the Collection Lambert (Avignon), the Fondation Luma (Arles), the Ateliers Medicis (Greater Paris), the Capucins (Embrun) and the Musée Dauphinois (Grenoble). Internationally, Wibaux has developed her research at the Ghent Botanical Garden in Belgium, in China at Suzhou, in Latvia at Cesis and in Georgia for the Tbilisi Art Fair. Following the Art-o-rama (Marseille) gallery prize, a monograph on Wibaux's work was published by Art+, followed by a solo show in 2018. Her work was subsequently presented at Galerie Le Corridor (Arles) with the Raised time exhibition. In autumn 2022 at La Box, on Reunion Island, an approach to the soil opens with the laboratory Harvest, led by artist Anne Fontaine. In June 2025, Wibaux exhibited at DomaineM as part of the Solacieux exhibition.
Delphine Wibaux is researcher at the Academy.
dephine.wibaux@ap.be
>> This research class is part of the Research Week during the annual research festival ARTICULATE.
