the image is fire

sun warming us in a cold country

barren of symbols for love

Lorde, A. (2023). Summer Oracle. In Coal (p. 34). L’Arche.

The next edition of the Biennale de l’Image Possible, BIP2026, will be held in Liège, from 17 October to 13 December 2026. With the theme ‘Mirror Mirror’ and a particular focus on portraits in all their forms, BIP2026 aims to combine the concepts of empathy and entropy through a selection of works by Belgian and international artists. The programme is currently being developed. Follow us on social media or subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed.

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Photography holds up a mirror to humanity, in which all that we are is reflected. Since its invention two centuries ago, photography has profoundly transformed the conditions of self-representation and revolutionised the portrait genre, the mirror genre par excellence. Democratisation and accessibility; speed and flexibility of execution; a vehicle for self-affirmation or group belonging; the subtlety in rendering the human figure in all its multiplicity. Through the portrait, photography has been and remains a means of promoting difference and diversity, just as much as a tool of narcissism, identity, or social and police control. It plays a role in societal cohesion, bringing us closer to one another and preserving memory, while simultaneously contributing to its fragmentation and hierarchization, not least by amplifying our egos.

In keeping with a curatorial approach that aims to link issues of imagery with societal issues, BIP2026 will take as its starting point photography’s capacity to confront us with ourselves, literally or metaphorically, for better or for worse.

While photography has transformed the way we see ourselves, it has also influenced how other media now engage with living beings, both human and non-human. More than ever, we are faced with representations of ourselves — multiple, faithful, and manipulated, yet always incomplete. BIP2026 would like to create a hall of mirrors, one diffraction among many of our world—more torn and chaotic than ever—in the hope of seeing a suture emerge. The photographic image will be presented alongside other forms of image-making shaped by it, from painting and drawing to AI-generated images.

Amidst this profusion of representations that have surrounded us for 200 years, and faced with the reality of a violent shift in which various forms of supremacism are asserting themselves, BIP 2026 will test the hypothesis that living in peace does not mean “restoring order” but rather sustaining precarious tensions and fragile, unruly, and stubborn forms of balance, always to be renewed. In a world that is veering towards polarisation, how can we think of ourselves as one among many, each living with dignity? If we cannot love and understand each other, can we at least still look at each other?

Empathy and entropy… Photography (with the variations it has unleashed in other media) has an immediate and infinite genius for revealing our faces and those of others. It has the ability to situate us before a mirror, quite literally putting us in the other’s place (empathy), yet without that position ever becoming fixed or static, remaining instead open to movement and disturbance (entropy). We will therefore leap from place to place, relentlessly, courageously, to be dazzled by our constant and necessary reinvention.

And what if everything held together once we accept that nothing goes together?