The Horta Museum has invited five artists to decorate the walls of Horta’s house, using velvet. Their creations will be on display from 13 September 2024 to 30 June 2025. Louisa Carmona, Flore & Pauline Fockedey, Elise Peroi and Marc Van Hoe were given complete creative freedom.

Each artist has created a hitherto unseen work to be installed in a room in the house…

Fabric will be the key feature of this exhibition. This choice echoes Horta’s marked fondness for textiles, especially silk, which was hung in several of the houses he designed. This is also a profoundly architectural choice ; the great nineteenthcentury theoretician saw textiles as the very source of all architecture, the matrix from which all ornamentation originates…

Here, velvet provides the central theme for this new venture. This textile is often used for furnishing, and was particularly favoured by Horta ; in this case, however, it is given a different mission, serving other purposes…

Louisa Carmona is a product and textile designer from Switzerland who is based in Brussels. She is a graduate of the ECAL University of Art and Design in Lausanne (S), and of ENSAV, the La Cambre School of Visual Arts in Brussels (BE).

Her work focuses on fabric and on different ways of fashioning it, on our interactions with the objects conceived in this manner, and on their influence on inhabited space. Her artistic practice is centered on materials and the connections they create.

Flore and Pauline Fockedey are sisters. They live and work in Brussels (BE). From time to time they work together on scenographic and artistic projects compatible with their respective artistic practices.

Flore is interested in flexible surfaces and in the different effects they produce on surrounding spaces. Although she often uses textiles, her projects are not limited to this medium. She creates temporary and permanent installations both for public and institutional spaces and domestic environments.

Pauline has developed an analytical approach incorporating architectural practice, academic research and artistic production. A co-founder of the Nord agency, she teaches at UC-Louvain-LOCI (the Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Urban Planning), where she is also completing a doctoral thesis.

Born in Nantes (FR) in 1990, Élise Peroi lives and works in Brussels (BE). She graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels with a Master’s degree in textile design in 2015.

From the beginning of her artistic career, Élise Peroi has worked with woven fabric and empty space, with the aim of translating breath and atmosphere – things that penetrate space. Inspired by François Julien’s book Vivre de paysage ou L’Impensé de la raison, she is looking for ways to translate an all-encompassing vision of the world, where everything around us « is no longer a matter of ‘seeing’ but of living ».

Her work, which reveals suspended spaces, also includes references to the notion of time, the artist’s studio and tools. This presentation of the elements that precede the creation of an artistic work relates to a publication by Paul Valéry, La philosophie de la danse, and raises awareness of the poetic aspects of gestures.

In 2010, Marc Van Hoe was awarded the Henri Van de Velde prize in recognition of his career. He has been working with textiles and velvet for the past 60 years, both in connection with the Instituut voor Textiel en Confectie België and for a large number of biennials and contemporary exhibitions (such as the Lausanne Biennial).

Throughout his artistic career, Marc Van Hoe has been exploring the power of the process involved in textile creation and its imagery. Giving material form to his conceptions and designs at various technical stages, each with their own materiality, Van Hoe has become a pioneer in the exploration of the sometimes elusive performance of independent layering. Van Hoe accentuates the value of textiles as a subjective and artistic support, allowing specific images to emerge. Combining various design techniques, Van Hoe has succeeded in following his personal creative impulse in his quest to produce woven images and has redefined his own place in the artistic domain in order to encourage the discourse around textiles and the new creative visions associated with them.

Having forged close links with a host of highly skilled artisans, the Musée Horta has launched another trilateral collaboration between creators, their expertise and a location. Each iteration of these exhibitions involves a three-way interaction…