Art Brussels

What remains of an exhibition once the works have been taken down? A memory, an echo… and sometimes simply an invitation card.

The artist Juan d’Oultremont has been collecting these fragments of memory for decades. More than 10,000 carefully archived exhibition invitations create a true mapping of contemporary art in Belgium. These invitations, often ephemeral, bear witness to the graphic trends, curatorial audacity and artists of yesterday and today, and here they become the material for an archive in motion. They tell the story of an artistic scene in perpetual evolution, where connections are multiplying, where certain names disappear while others assert themselves. They evoke mythical galleries, singular museums, temporary initiatives, all those places that have left their mark on the Belgian artistic cultural landscape over the last fifty years. They document the programming choices made. They list the risk-taking and elective affinities that have shaped contemporary art.

But this collection is not a straight compilation. It needs to be activated. For Art Brussels 2025, under the name CARTON PLEIN, it will become a collective work, an archive in process, just waiting to be expanded!

In collaboration with ULB’s Archives, Heritage and Special Collections, this project questions the boundary between conservation and activation, between memory and creation. Here, the archive does not halt history, it extends it, shapes it and brings a new dynamic to it.

We demonstrate. You participate. We activate. Altogether.