In a project that challenges Western notions of time and its instruments of measurement, Laurent Mbaah invites you to explore texts and images that represent alternative ways of relating to time, the present, the past and the future. Through speech, drawing and writing, you will be invited to imagine local representations of time, rooted in African cultures, decolonial and Afro-diasporic perspectives.

These workshops are an invitation to take part in collective oral, written and visual activities, exclusively for people of African descent.

The workshops will take place in Brussels on the following dates: 9 May, 23 May, 30 May, 13 June and 20 June.

Further information and registration here (5 places per workshop).

Workshops organised as part of the exhibition ‘An Infinite Woman’, which opens on 28 November 2026 at Kanal – Centre Pompidou.

Les Îles Mardi is a shared workshop and a Brussels-based cooperative, run by its members. This exhibition project traces the evolution of our association since we set up in Rue d’Arlon, within walls that we erected ourselves. In doing so, we have created a workspace and a hybrid structure that protects, accommodates and pays its members.

This structure is not merely physical; it is political and social. It embodies our collective strength whilst highlighting its fragility: a delicate and demanding balance that requires constant care to remain healthy and sustainable.

But how can we bring together different practices and aesthetics? How can we find common ground? The exchange of our expertise is the driving force behind our interactions and the central theme of this exhibition, transforming our diversity into a shared field of exploration. The structure of the exhibition reflects our mode of governance; for this edition, the artists were allocated by drawing lots. This format of ‘mini-curation within the curation’ has encouraged listening, experimentation and mutual adaptation.

Through a chronological journey, (SUR)MONTAGE documents the creation of a space as much as that of a collaborative entity. It is an invitation to view our cooperative not as a static outcome, but as a living organism in constant evolution.

Open to the public on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th from 2 pm to 6 pm

Visits by appointment from 25 to 28

On the second day, there will be a workshop held in Les Îles Mardi, led by Khajag Apelian and Naïma Ben Ayed, entitled "Revivals Reconsidered" to discuss the question of what constitutes a Typeface revival.

The workshop invites participants, to critically rethink this practice and explore possible futures by creating a shared set of revival-making guidelines.

For more information, visit SLARG.BE

Participation is free, registration is required!

Three years ago, we ran our first legal access workshops for a handful of people from the workshops. Faced with growing demand, which reflects a real need among artists to take ownership of these tools for empowerment, we have decided to relaunch a series of sessions in our new premises.

Why these workshops:

Cultural institutions all too often regard economic and practical issues as too trivial to be addressed in creative spaces. The reality faced by artists—who often juggle several jobs to make ends meet whilst funding their own work—is, meanwhile, virtually invisible, thereby confining creative practice to the privileged few who can afford not to worry about production costs.

This approach, as well as failing to promote artists’ autonomy and independence, serves to perpetuate existing social and structural inequalities. By separating the role of artist from that of worker, and the bread-and-butter job from artistic income, it creates precarious conditions for both the worker and the artist.

It is to contribute, in our own small way, to addressing this need that we wish to organise these discussions. Designed by and for artists, these workshops are like a toolkit created collectively with the participants.

In the face of the issues mentioned above, our response will always be one of organisation and collective action.

Cyber kids roaming the depths of the gafams in pursuit of a digital dream, present their work on a variety of mediums.

The infinite opulence of the internets spams us, force-feed us? In modern rituals, we glean from a cyber playground, constantly questioning the way we consume visual information.

Frozen by the themes of the times, we unconsciously seek to rid ourselves of all academic training and make art freely, with the tools that work best, exploring the unforeseen powers and limits of old and new technologies.

Exhibition initiated by Toms la sauce & Arthur Sitoze.

‘Homo Spectator is the man who, in the darkness of a cave, was the first to leave a mark outside himself. He stretched out his arm, pressed it against the wall, coated his hand in pigment, and withdrew it. He then saw the image of his hand—the first image of himself.’

These are the opening words of Marie José Mondzain’s book of the same name.

Homo Spectator invites you on a journey through this narrative of the first image, the final step, the footprint, and memory. Works populated by spectres, straddling collective histories and personal narratives, real and imagined, driven by the desire to speak out, to leave a mark – just as one leaves a handprint on the walls of a cave, just as one shares a story, just as one wages a battle against oblivion.

A group exhibition that takes its name from a hardy, perennial plant that grows between two environments. Like this plant, the multidisciplinary works grope their way towards carving out a path from one world to another. They depict a humanity that carves out living spaces for itself, yet where the intrusive and artificial marks of capitalism cling on. Still distilling, here and there, false happiness, the nightmare from which we seek to escape is deep and dense. Forcing a de-sublimation and refusing to succumb to tragic complacency, the works on display sketch out a vital force that takes tortuous paths to ensure it never dies out.

Our practices—spanning sculpture, painting, costume design, installation and video—resonate here, and our undeniably evocative works exude a distinct presence. Visitors is invited to wander through an underground space bathed in colour, to immerse themselves in an otherworldly realm of fluid, almost liquid forms, where corals and sea anemones invade mouths and crotches, where riddled vases drip, where the canvas becomes a fantastical landscape and where, beneath the satin quilt, the silhouette of extravagant gems takes shape.

Everywhere, imprints, fragments of bodies and the molted skins of everyday objects; so many pieces of ourselves that form a vivid, embodied composition, as sensual as it is strange, somewhere between flesh and bedroom.

Inside Récif galery you'll find more than 30 resident artists productions: painting, illustration, ceramics, tufting, sculpture, prints and much more... 100% Brussels made art to slide under the Christmas tree!

Our tattoo artists Hedi Baka, BKS and Toms la sauce are ready to work their magic on your skin with the designs below! We can’t wait to see you there.