This website uses cookies.

More information Accept

Agenda: Soon ?

→ 20:00

Friday 13.02.26

Volksdansen: Open Gathering #1

→ Film
→ 20:00

Monday 16.02.26

Guillaume Bijl – André Breton et ses amis à Saint-Cirq-Lapopie

→ Film
→ 20:00

→ 13:30

Monday 23.02.26

Burnout prevention for artists and cultural workers

→ 13:30

Monday 02.03.26

Burnout prevention for artists and cultural workers

→ 13:30

Monday 16.03.26

Burnout prevention for artists and cultural workers

→ Erfgoeddag
→ performance
→ 11:00

Sunday 26.04.26

Erfgoeddag:

Nadar Ensemble: Voiceless Mass (Raven Chacon)

→ Erfgoeddag
→ performance
→ 11:00

Full Archive

Agenda: Archive

→ 13:30

Monday 09.02.26

Burnout prevention for artists and cultural workers

→ Exhibition
→ 20:00

30.01 — 01.02.26

Opening Weekend:

Opening weekend: Kasper De Vos, Firas El Hallak, Shif — t*

→ Exhibition
→ 20:00

25 12 05 KHG VRIJDAGAVOND BROEI ISAAC 17

Sluiten

→ 20:00

Friday 13.02.26

Volksdansen: Open Gathering #1

Welcome for the very first VOLKSDANSEN Open Gathering! With Volksdansen, Nixie Van Laere (she/they), Maïthé Truyens De Wilde (she/her), and Elena Vloeberghen (she/her) conduct an artistic inquiry into the movement language and social functions of Flemish folk dances and textile traditions from the 18th and 19th centuries. They explore how rhythm, patterns, and materials brought communities together and what meaning they can take on today.

→ 20:00

Volksdansen

Central to this work are the joy of dancing together, the accessibility of movement, and tradition as a source of connection. Dance and textiles run parallel and intersect: both bear traces of collective rituals, embodied knowledge, and sustainability. Along the way, they touch upon themes of archiving dance and textiles, intangible heritage, and authorship.

Each residency period concludes with an “open moment,” where we invite you to step into our process. We are ending our first residency at Kunsthal Gent with an open work session centered on dancing together and collectivity. We invite you to join us in questioning old dance patterns (circles, crosses, flag formations, …). What do these patterns evoke? What do they tell us about how we approach dancing together today? We share our experiences in relation to contemporary nightlife — is it experienced as individual or collective? Can new forms of intimacy and connection emerge?

The stories that surface during this evening will be further integrated into our textile research and carried forward into the development of our new folk dances. Drinks and a warm atmosphere provided!

Please register here

With ‘Volksdansen,’ Nixie Van Laere (they/them), Maïthé Truyens De Wilde (she/her), and Elena Vloeberghen (she/her) form an ad hoc collective emerging from the fields of performance, visual arts, and textiles. What connects us is a shared fascination with physicality, collective practices, and the power of moving together. We seek ways to question and reimagine the traditions of folk dance and textiles within a contemporary context.

Their collaboration has grown organically from previous encounters: Nixie & Maïthé through a choreography project centered on workout videos, and Nixie & Elena as each other’s artistic sounding boards. ‘Volksdansen’ represents the next step, in which they merge their practices and sensibilities into a collective inquiry.

They operate at the intersection of performance, visual art, and textiles, with a specific focus on the body as a vessel for memory and community.

Info

• Participation is free, all welcome, please register via the link above
• The development of Volksdansen is made possible with the support of the Flemish Government, Kunsthal Gent, and Kunstenfestival Watou

Nixie Van Laere

Nixie Van Laere is a multimedia artist, writer, and parent. In her practice, she explores themes such as HIV, kinship and family, a non-linear approach to history, and the body as a vessel for the past. Working primarily with textiles, video, performance, and text, the core of Nixie’s work lies in connecting personal experiences to broader social and historical narratives. In her work, the body functions as an archive: a place where memory, care, loss, and continuity converge. By approaching history as fragmentary and relational rather than linear, Nixie carves out space for stories that often fall outside the dominant historiography.

Textiles play a key role in her practice, functioning as both material and a bearer of meaning. When combined with video, performance, and text, they create works in which physicality, proximity, and time become tangible. Her work questions how family and kinship are formed, passed down, and reimagined.

Maïthé Truyens De Wilde

Maïthé Truyens De Wilde is a hybrid maker with a preference for slowness, softness, and physical depth. She feels an affinity with artists who, through mindfulness and vulnerability, offer resistance to a fast-paced, overstimulated existence. Her work resides at the intersection of performance and visual art, with a practice rooted in the body as a source of experience, memory, and connection — that which we always carry with us. Through deceleration and non-verbal communication, she explores proximity to the self, the other, and the environment. She is also active in screen printing and drawing; these works register time and movement, primarily in series. They are quiet, attentive, and reveal the human being in all their vulnerability.

Her inspiration often lies in the everyday — the things right in front of us that easily become invisible. She brings those subtleties to the surface, placing them on a stage or capturing them on paper.

Elena Vloeberghen

Elena Vloeberghen is a Belgian artist who works from a sustainable and tactile approach to textile design and scenography. Her work explores the tension between nature and industry, order and chaos, vulnerability and resilience. Fascinated by human traces in the landscape, she translates these into textile objects and scenographic installations, where chance and experimentation play a central role.

She works as a scenographer, facilitates workshops focused on diversity and femininity, and finds her voice through collaborations with various artists. At the heart of her practice is the relationship between material, emotion, and space, inviting the viewer to experience the beauty found in friction and contrast.

Gerelateerde Ontwikkelingsprogramma’s