iBOZAR - Centre for Fine Arts Brussels (Palais des Beaux-Arts)Mont des Arts
Edith Dekyndt's work set against rarely seen Balenciaga archives, on how materials hold memory.
In the first room, a piece of red velvet sits inside a freezer, changing slowly as it is kept there. Nearby is a Balenciaga silk evening gown that looks slashed with a knife. Nobody cut it: over the decades the silk dried out and split by itself.
That is the idea behind the title, Balenciaga's own line that the fabric decides. You walk in under a long veil Dekyndt made after studying the house's Paris archives, stretched across the whole entrance. Three rooms follow, pairing archive couture, including a dress form of the kind he built clients' clothes on, with Dekyndt's work. One room holds her notebooks, among them one from a 1980s visit to the Prado, whose Velázquez and Goya also fed Balenciaga's designs.
It's in Bozar's Circuit Antichambres, Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 to 18:00. Tickets are €10, €7 under 26, free under 18, and some slots already show as sold out. The ticket also covers Basil Al-Rawi's House of Memory that day.
The entrance veil
Look up as you come in: Dekyndt's veil, made after her time in the Balenciaga archives, runs horizontally across the whole entrance space.
The velvet in the freezer
Look for a piece of red velvet kept inside a freezer in the first room, slowly transforming while the show runs.
The gown that split itself
A Balenciaga silk evening gown looks knife-slashed, but the vertical splits are the silk drying out and tearing over time.
Dekyndt's notebooks
Her working notes fill a room, including a notebook from a 1980s trip to the Prado, the museum whose Velázquez and Goya also inspired Balenciaga.
Under-18s get in free, and Bozar has children's guides with activities for discovering the works in this show.
iRoyal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (Old Masters Museum and Modern Museum)
iRoyal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (Old Masters Museum and Modern Museum)
iRoyal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (Old Masters Museum and Modern Museum)
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