Featured Artist: Pierre Liebaert

Pierre Liebaert (Mons, b. 1990) creates a dialogue between his photographs of winter celebrations and objects from the collections of the Musée de la Vie wallonne. Designed specifically for the Drapiers venue, the exhibition explores popular imaginaries surrounding experiences of loss, transformation, and new beginnings.

Folk art often springs from a simple concern: nothing lasts. A fire goes out. A celebration ends. A face grows old. A presence is missing. Yet, everywhere, humans have invented ways to hold on to what slips away from them. They have created doubles: effigies, imprints, amulets, votive offerings, images. Not to stop time, but to grant things another way of enduring. The photographs on display at Les Drapiers, in dialogue with objects from the collections of the Musée de la Vie Wallonne brought together in Au-dessus du sans fond (To remain above the abyss), seem to stem from this same impulse. Something emerges from the indistinct matter, undergoes the process, is shrouded in shadow, is exposed to fire. Then the forms lighten until they become traces: a hand remains on a wall, a silhouette lingers in the wax, a figure still waits in the hollow of a mold. Form is born, flickers, disappears, then returns in a different form. Gradually, the individual appears less separate from the world around them: humans discover they are close to animals, trees, ashes, and ghosts. Not because they are regressing to a former state, but because they are rediscovering their place within a broader cycle of transformations. To remain above the abyss, then, would mean this: recognizing that nothing belongs to us permanently and discovering, in this very precariousness, the possibility of continuity.
– Pierre Liebaert

Dates: October 17, 2026 – December 12, 2026

Opening hours:
Thursday to Saturday, 2pm–6pm
Or by appointment via bonjour@lesdrapiers.be
Free entry

Address: Rue Hors Château 68, 4000 Liège

Opening night: October 17, 2026, 3pm

Website : https://www.lesdrapiers.be/