Artists’ works selected by BIP punctuate the exhibition itinerary, exploring how photography (as a way of seeing rather than a technique) enables us to observe and reflect on individuals in the way they come together (or do not), to form families, communities or groups of varying sizes, whether enduringly or for the duration of an Instagram post, in a state of balance or disruption.
To begin with, the mirror represents not only symmetry and face-to-face encounters, but also what lies “off-camera” – the hidden aspects or the different stories that can be told simply by changing one’s perspective. To open the exhibition itinerary, we present three artists who lay bare these truths and remind us that one image always conceals another.
Karel de Cock (BE, 1982, lives and works in Brussels), with the film *Benevolence*, 14’, HD, 2024.
Karel De Cock works in the fields of film and photography. His work challenges normative frameworks in order to reveal what is usually kept hidden. His practice examines the weight of social conformity through popular culture, cinema and media history. “Benevolence” is a montage film created from isolated micro-scenes drawn from a corpus of 1,200 Hollywood films from the 1940s and 1950s. Through editing, the artist lays bare the conventions and gendered dynamics as portrayed in classic cinema: women are approached, guided, then pursued and cornered, their movements and free will restricted under the guise of good intentions and a submission that barely conceals the violence before them. Despite the historical distance, these scenes still resonate as familiar in the productions of the contemporary Western cultural industry.
Max Pinckers (BE, 1988, lives and works in Brussels), with the photo series 2020-MMXX, photograph, 2020. In collaboration with the Sofie Van de Velde Gallery (Antwerp).
Max Pinkers’ work challenges the conventions of documentary photography by exploring theatricality, performativity and collaboration in the creation of his photographic series. For the artist, photography is a speculative act that goes beyond the mere representation of external realities. His approach to reality and truth is multifaceted and open to different forms of expression.
In November 2020, Max Pinckers photographed Rome in the midst of lockdown for the Fotografia Collezione Roma. He used several cameras to photograph the same scene simultaneously from different vantage points. This act deconstructs the myth of the ‘decisive moment’ and serves as a reminder that there is always something that photography conceals and other angles to every story.
Aglaia Konrad (AUT, 1960, lives and works in Brussels), with the work *Frauenzimmer*, 2022–2025, mixed media, glass from the CBR building in Brussels (architects Brodski and Lambrichs, 1970), metal supports designed by Richard Venlet, 5 modules. In collaboration with the Nadja Vilenne Gallery (Liège).
*Frauenzimmer* consists of monumental panes of glass, both reflective and transparent, arranged in a series in the manner of the lenses of a camera. A participatory image-maker as much as a memorial to modernist and brutalist heritage—at once architecture, sculpture and selfie machine—this work engages and reflects the public in its relationship with itself, with art and with the surrounding space.
Aglaia Konrad is well known as an architectural photographer, but she is also an architect of photography who, in her work, draws inspiration from the vocabulary of photography and explores its strategies and mechanisms.
The mirror also offers the possibility of reflecting not just oneself, but together with others, and of fostering cohesion. Today, the reinvention of one’s identity, empowerment and the affirmation of one’s presence are achieved through the image of oneself and one’s community. The photographers below explore the ways in which young people, in all their diversity, anger and passions, construct an image of themselves as a society, a group or a family – whether chosen or not.
Robin Wen (FR, 1994, lives and works in Paris and Brussels), with a selection of drawings from the series *Entremêler* and *Lumière*. In collaboration with the Belgian Gallery, Galerie C, Gallery Wilde and private collectors.
Robin Wen’s artistic practice explores the world of ‘Free Parties’. The artist depicts scenes captured on the fly within these spaces of ephemeral freedom, inhabited by a generation in opposition to the dominant system. Drawing on his personal archives or everyday objects, Robin Wen approaches this environment with a rigorous and precise artistic treatment, revealing a meticulous and patient mastery of drawing that lends his works a remarkable visual density. The choice of the ballpoint pen – a tool often associated with sketching or everyday writing – allows Robin Wen to repurpose an ordinary medium to produce highly complex compositions. Robin Wen’s work is also distinguished by its hyperrealistic rendering: textures, lighting and expressions are rendered with almost photographic precision.
With his series “Entremêler*, he captures embraces through the tip of his four-colour ballpoint pen. Emerging from the half-light, bodies entwine and merge, faces become obscured, individuals lose their individuality, and forms border on abstraction. For a fleeting moment, these young ravers are shielded from prying eyes and express a gentle yet intense resistance to a society that has become alien to them.
For Lumière, it is the whiteness of the paper that lends clarity and movement to the fireworks or the spotlights at parties.
Farren van Wyk (ZA, 1993, lives and works between Amsterdam and Johannesburg), with *Mixedness is my Mythology*, photographs, 2020 – ongoing.
Born in South Africa and raised in the Netherlands, Farren van Wyk photographs the ambiguous space of mixed identity. In *Mixedness is my Mythology*, she turns her lens on her own family, using black-and-white film. Through a conscious reference and subversion, she re-enacts the iconography of colonial images that categorised bodies to justify oppression. By reappropriating these images, she transforms photography into an act of reclaiming and reconciliation: together with her father, mother and four brothers, she forges a unique family iconography on film to create her own definition of what it means to be a person of colour. In collaboration with the Fotomuseum Den Haag.
Lua Ribeira (Spain, 1986, lives and works in Bristol), with *Agony in the Garden*, photographic series, 2022.
Drawing on her personal journey, Lua Ribeira (a member of the Magnum agency since 2023) explores the mechanisms of oppression and exclusion in society. Rooted in both rigorous research and immersion within the communities she engages with, Lua’s photographic practice enables her to create encounters that challenge the structural divisions between people and their environments.
Set in the urban peripheries of southern Spain, Lua Ribeira’s series *The Agony in the Garden* features collaborations with young people from the trap and drill scenes. Inspired by the potential of contemporary counter-culture, interwoven with religious references, the images express the alienation and uncertainty of our times. Lua Ribeira’s subjects navigate environments that are both local and global. Their clothing and gestures reflect their connections to the digital world, yet the scenes unfold against a backdrop of material overproduction, widespread precariousness, and persistent financial and environmental crises. In collaboration with the agency Office Tipode.
Eloïse Brunet (FR, 1996) and Romain Cavallin (FR, 1994) with *You didn’t know it, but I ran away last Tuesday*, photography, 2025 – in progress.
Since January 2025, Éloïse Brunet and Romain Cavallin have been running photography workshops with young people in judicial care, within the IPPJs — Public Youth Protection Institutions — in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. The series “Vous ne le saviez pas, mais j’ai fugué mardi dernier” brings together images born of these delicate encounters, within a restrictive and severe institutional context. For these young people, photography offers a rare space for expression. The work of the two photographers presents testimonies of a reality experienced from the inside, as told by those who are living through it. The result of tenacity and constant attentiveness, “Vous ne le saviez pas, mais j’ai fugué mardi dernier” explores both the social function of photography and our perspective on a youth that is all too often rendered invisible. In collaboration with La Nombreuse (Brussels).
Ultimately, the mirror is a game of hide-and-seek. Whilst looking into our own eyes, we are surrounded by everything going on around us: other people, the setting, life itself. The following artists give the audience the chance to play with their own image, whilst realising that, when faced with our reflection, we are never alone, nor are we ever exactly the same from one moment to the next.
Werner Moron (BE, 1962) with *L’âme-Le diable*, mixed media, hand truck, pierced mirror, (1997–2000), reactivated in 2026, with a dedicated Instagram account.
Werner Moron’s artistic approach is based on a constant critical distance from the impact of capitalism on our lives. To this end, he chooses to stage acts, performances or events that involve the participation of the viewer, who is invited to engage in dialogue or simply be present. In order to explore the world, the artist constantly varies the venues for his interventions—whether institutional or not—and blends artistic modes of expression with modes of production: paintings, drawings, installations, performances and lecture-performances. Added to this is a steadfast commitment to writing, which sheds light on the verbal origins of his visual art.
L’âme-le diable is an installation designed to be activated : a mirror placed on a hand truck is pierced with three oval openings through which the audience can place their faces. To activate the work, at least two people are required: one person stands ‘on the other side of the mirror’, placing their head through the opening, whilst another stands facing them and creates the image. More than just a selfie where one is alone, arm outstretched, taking a photo of oneself against the landscape, here our face floats amidst everything reflected in the mirror around the hole through which we look, and someone else must take the photo. We are also ‘in the landscape’ here, but the landscape is now one with us, creating a most striking effect…
Karel Martens (NL, 1939) with *Icon Viewer*, an interactive digital installation, 2015.
Karel Martens is one of the most influential Dutch graphic designers and typographers of the second half of the 20th century. As co-founder of WerkplaatsTypografie, one of Europe’s most renowned schools of graphic design, Karel Martens’s practice combines inventiveness and experimentation, all fused into colourful and playful formal exploration.
Icon Viewer began as a typeface that combines shapes and colours in various alphabetic icons. In 2015, Karel Martens used it in an interactive installation that captures viewers’ movements and converts them into complex pixels, characteristic of his graphic universe. Facing the screen, viewers find themselves transformed into moving graphic symbols.