Hosting welcomes and celebrates the artistic diversity of the Brussels scene, opening up to the city, to its periphery, its artists and its audiences. The exhibition is presented as a large-scale cabinet of curiosities occupying all of Centrale’s spaces.

Inspired by the Summer Exhibition, an annual event held at the Royal Academy in London, hosting is an open call to Brussels-based artists of all generations and disciplines in the visual arts. The Brussels Art Centre is intent on welcoming artists from both the city’s center and its periphery, thus outlining the contours of a wider and more inclusive city, whose perimeter might be called, as says artist Pélagie Gbaguidi, the 20th commune of Brussels. The exhibition hosting questions the notions of hospitality, of territory, of solidarity and of emergence in today’s art ecosystem. Talks and performances will take place in connection with these questions.

Microbial Ancestors (pink) – 225cm x 170cm, jacquard woven textile work, 2023

After refurbishing its spaces, Centrale presents the exhibition hosting, from 10.10.2024 to 09.02.2025.hosting welcomes and celebrates the artistic diversity of the Brussels scene, the exhibition is presented as a large-scale cabinet of curiosities occupying all of Centrale’s spaces.

Anne Marie Maes is presenting a large jacquard-woven textile work named ‘Microbial Ancestors’.
‘Microbial Ancestors’ (Topography of a Sensorial Skin) is a woven interpretation of a Sensorial Skin. Its topographic view visualizes the ecology of the symbiotic organism composed of Acetobacter xylinum bacteria and Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast cells and the several layers of cellulose woven by these bacteria to create the skin-like material. The original Sensorial Skin (which was model to the woven interpretation) was grown in a culture of fresh hibiscus tea, giving it its pink colour. When translated into a textile medium, it results in a play of light shining through the lightly woven, multi-layered work, reminiscent of the multiple layers woven by the bacteria.
The artwork is realized on a computer-controlled, state-of-the-art Dornier Jacquard weaving machine at the TextielLab in Tilburg (Nl), with an array of organic fibers: linen, paper, polyester, elirex and cotton.