Valérie Mannaerts, 'Antennae'

03.04-30.08.2026

Curator: Valerie Verhack

With ‘Antennae’, M Leuven presents artist Valérie Mannaerts’ first retrospective in Belgium. She brings together a selection of works spanning more than thirty years of artistic practice, complemented by new, previously unexhibited work.

‘Antennae’ marks a significant milestone in Mannaerts’ career. Over the past five years, she has worked intensively on projects in the public domain, often in collaboration with architects and craftspeople. Amongst other things, she created a mosaic floor for the Stock Exchange Building in Brussels – ‘Private Architecture (BeursBourse)’ (2023). These slow, collective processes contrast with the new work in the exhibition, in which Mannaerts once again seeks out the directness of the studio.

“For more than three decades, Valérie Mannaerts has been consistently building a body of work that has gained international recognition and is particularly prominent in public spaces across Belgium. We are therefore delighted that M has the privilege of being the first to showcase her multifaceted work in all its complexity.” - Bert Cornillie, alderman for culture and chair of the board of directors of M Leuven

Mannaerts works with a variety of media, including painting, drawing, photography and sculpture, and uses materials such as textiles, wool, bronze, wood, ceramics and papier-mâché. A defining feature of her work is the constant blurring of boundaries between disciplines. Visual art, architecture and design are not separate from one another, but constantly shift in function: a canvas can become a sculpture, and garments can transform into installations.

Elements characteristic of Mannaerts’ work, such as curtains and screens, also play an important role. This ‘fluid architecture’ creates spaces within space: places that feel both open and sheltered, or constitute a form of ‘private architecture’ – a term she often chooses as the title for her works in the public domain.

Hybrid and multifaceted

Valérie Mannaerts’s multifaceted oeuvre departs from intuition, materials and sensory experience. Through hybrid works, she questions the forms and properties of things and examines themes such as metamorphosis, identity and physicality, drawing on feminist theories. Her work is layered, amorphous and flexible.

The exhibition opens with 'Volubly Troublously' (2025), a new work that immediately introduces Mannaerts’s distinctive visual language. The sculpture consists of a painted canvas in the shape of an open tunic or kimono, tulle and ribbons. Nipples, flowers, berries and other organic motifs appear on its surface.

The work lies at the intersection of painting and sculpture and references the female body, vitality and clothing. It sets the tone for the rest of the exhibition, which is organized not chronologically but into thematic clusters.

“Although ‘Antennae’ offers a comprehensive overview, it is deliberately not a traditional retrospective. The works are not presented chronologically and do not follow a linear narrative. Through dialogue, we selected them based on an intuitive clustering of works. This reflects the way Valérie Mannaerts works: deeply rooted in feeling and intuition. Hopefully, this will also be palpable in the exhibition.” - Valerie Verhack, curator

A sharp and contemporary picture of Mannaerts’s practice unfolds across five galleries. The first gallery explores the tension between painting and sculpture. In the next room, the focus shifts to the human body – a body capable of carrying and generating meaning through clothing, which is akin to a skin.

The third room functions as a kind of outdoor space: a monumental woven garden that unfolds as a panorama of a personal place. In the final two rooms, the focus turns inwards, once more, to the interplay between the private and the public. The exhibition culminates in a new installation in which Mannaerts explores the position that artistic practice can occupy today.

‘Antennae’ invites visitors to be guided by forms and images that constantly shift between the intimate and the monumental, the personal and the universal.

About the title

The title of the exhibition, ‘Antennae’, refers to the antennae of insects, which they use to sense their surroundings and pick up signals. At the same time, it also serves as a metaphor for Mannaerts’s artistic sensitivity. Just as insects use their antennae to orient themselves, the artist appears to employ her own ‘antennae’ to detect subtle connections between her world, her work, the viewer and the space in which it is displayed.

Moreover, the image of antennae suggests a constant movement between inside and outside. Mannaerts’s work often emerges precisely in these transitional zones, where personal experiences, materials, architecture and physical forms converge. In this way, the artist is both connected to the world and entirely self-contained.

A selection of works

For this work, which features in the promotional images for the exhibition, Mannaerts draws on an intimate tradition: the custom of casting a child’s first shoes in bronze. The forms were first modelled in salt dough and then cast in patinated bronze. The fragile canvas shoes contrast sharply with the heavy and durable bronze concealed within them. This creates a tension between fragility and weight, vulnerability and durability – a contrast that Mannaerts often explores in her work.

This large textile installation is arranged in a circular formation within M Leuven’s space. It is a reinterpretation of an installation that Mannaerts created for the multipurpose space at the new headquarters of Pleegzorg Vlaams-Brabant en Brussel [Foster Care Flemish Brabant and Brussels] in Leuven, commissioned by URA Architects. The textile was woven at the Textiellab in Tilburg.

The installation is based on seven drawings by Mannaerts, translated into fabric using a Jacquard weaving technique. Together, the double-sided panels form a panoramic curtain in recto verso.

The images are inspired by the garden surrounding the building in Leuven, designed by landscape architect Jacques Wirtz. Dense foliage, trees, animals and objects appear in the woven image.

The space for which the work was originally created is a place where foster children meet their parents. The curtain therefore needed to convey a sense of calm and protection while leaving room for the imagination. Even when closed, it still offers a glimpse of the garden.

Biography

Valérie Mannaerts (b. 1974) was raised in a bilingual family in Brussels. From 1992 to 1996, she studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, where her tutors included Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven and Stefan Hertmans. She works in Brussels (Molenbeek).

In the late 1990s, Mannaerts made her debut with works on paper in which she explored her own body and sexuality. She followed in the footsteps of female artists from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Eva Hesse, and developed a distinctive and adventurous visual language rooted in amorphousness.

Since 1996, her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions, both at home and abroad. She represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale in 2003, alongside the artist Sylvie Eyberg.

Mannaerts has completed residencies at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2007) and at the ISCP in New York (2008). She has exhibited her work at Kunsthalle Münster, Bozar (Brussels), the Roger Raveel Museum (Machelen-aan-de-Leie), Extra City (Antwerp), REDCAT Gallery (Los Angeles), KIOSK (Ghent), de Appel (Amsterdam) and Culturgest (Lisbon), amongst others.

Mannaerts has been teaching at the Haute École d’Art et de Design (HEAD) in Geneva since 2020.

Publications on her work include ‘Valérie Mannaerts. An Exhibition, Another Exhibition’ (Sternberg Press, 2011) and ‘Hit Me With Your Colour Stick’ (MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 2000).

To mark her exhibition ‘Antennae’ at M, a publication of the same name is being released by Walther König Verlag.

The exhibition will travel to the Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry – Le Crédac, where Valérie Mannaerts’s work will be on display from January to March 2027.

PRESS FILE

Images: studio, archives and installation views

Mediagalerij: Antennae – Valérie Mannaerts in M Leuven

61 afbeeldingen - 02.04-30.08.2026

M Leuven

Wall text and exhibition folder

Additional information

Valérie Mannaerts, Paul Robbrecht and Samuel Saelemakers in conversation | M Leuven

Samuel Saelemakers: “Hello Valérie and Paul, it’s great that we can meet for this conversation in the context of Valérie’s solo exhibition ‘Antennae’ at M Leuven. Paul (Robbrecht en Daem architecten ) and I have both worked individually with Valérie on various projects in the public space. During this conversation, we’ll shed some light on those collaborations. Paul, Valérie, how did your first collaboration come about?”

M Leuven

The Secret Life of Clothes: The meaning behind what we wear | M Leuven

The clothes we wear tell a story about ourselves and the world around us. In her book ‘Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes’, Shahidha Bari explores how garments carry meaning, evokes emotions, and shape our relationship with ourselves and our surroundings. During this Food for Thought lecture, she shares her research and engages in conversation with Valérie Mannaerts.

M Leuven

A reflective look at Valérie Mannaerts’ ‘Antennae’ | M Leuven

What happens when we really look? How does meaning arise both in and through an image? How do material, scale, and space relate to our perception? During this Food for Thought evening, art historian and philosopher Thierry de Duve guides you through ‘Antennae’, Valérie Mannaerts’ solo exhibition at M. Drawing on his own thinking about art and aesthetics, De Duve offers a sharp and personal perspective on the exhibition.

M Leuven

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Opening 'Antennae' by Valérie Mannaerts and presentation of M-resident Judith Van Oeckel | M Leuven

On Thursday evening, 2 April, we will open a new exhibition at M: 'Antennae' by Valérie Mannaerts.

M Leuven

CONTACT