Entitled MIROIR MIROIR, BIP2026 will bring together several exhibitions at a single venue. One will showcase a composite collection of portraits, created from a variety of figures (human and non-human beings) and using any visual medium (painting, photography, video, drawing, etc.). The aim is to create a heterogeneous collection of fragments, free associations arising from a multitude of disparate elements. The selected portraits will be brought together and staged in a vast, free-flowing space.
We are soliciting these portraits from you, visual artists. Whether it is a single image or part of a series, large or small, already produced or yet to be produced, painted, drawn or printed, we will consider all your proposals. Self-portraits are permitted, as are group portraits. We are keen to embrace the unique ways in which artists, from all backgrounds, nationalities and generations, have seen, observed and depicted those living individuals who have returned their gaze or granted their presence as a model, an ideal or a subject.
BIP2026 will take place from 17 October to 13 December 2026 in Liège. This 14th edition, MIROIR MIROIR, is based on the following intention:
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. 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.
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?
How to apply? To apply, please complete the form below and attach 1 to 3 low-resolution images (JPEG or PDF files, max. 2 MB each). The form can be completed in French or English. Deadline: 19 April 2026.
If selected? You will be asked to meet deadlines and comply with communication requirements (providing information and high-resolution images on time). We will contact you individually to organise any transport or the production of the works. The works are insured by BIP2026.
No remuneration is provided for this one-off loan, but we offer a €50 book voucher for the TipiBookshop (Brussels) or the Comptoir du Livre (Liège) – online purchases are possible at both bookshops – as well as two free tickets for BIP2026 and for all the events that will be organised.
Timeline:
19/04/2026 before midnight: call for entries closes
19/05/2026: notification to the selected applicants
September 2026: production, transport and installation
17/10/2026: opening
Contact and info:
@bipliege