Vincent Meessen: After / D’après / Na

CIVA is pleased to present Vincent Meessen’s exhibition After / D’après / Na, the inaugural project of Research in Residence, a collection-based transdisciplinary research initiative for architects, artists, landscape designers, academics, and critics.

Research in Residence renegotiates the terrain between the often hermetic sphere of archives and their public exposure. The program supports innovative research through various forms: exhibitions, installations, podcasts, talks, essays, performances, and more. Intellectual exchange that emerges from long-term dialogue is at the heart of this pilot project, which intends to go beyond a mono-historical perspective in favor of nonlinear interpretations of CIVA’s collection. Research in Residence is a platform for projects that challenge current research norms and promote alternative modes of knowledge production and distribution.

Artist Vincent Meessen inaugurates CIVA’s new research residency program. In his exhibition After / D’après / Na, architecture is integrated into an environment and its various cohabitants, human and nonhuman alike. The exhibition weaves together two types of architecture that characterize La Garenne, a rural plot on the outskirts of Brussels: the Art Nouveau cottage, exemplified by a demolished work by Léon Sneyers (whose archive is part of the CIVA collection), and the contemporary house, as articulated by OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen and their design on the same site.

The exhibition, located at the crossroads of architecture, contemporary art, and ecology, will be accompanied by a program of events including a screening of Meessen’s early video works and a guided tour of the CIVA Collections by the artist. 

Vincent Meessen lives and works in Brussels. Meessen’s work has been presented at WIELS (Brussels, 2016), BOZAR (Brussels, 2017), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, 2018), the Power Plant (Toronto, 2019), and in numerous biennials including those in Venice (2015), Taipei (2016), Shanghai (2018), Chicago (2019), Lubumbashi (2019), São Paulo (2021), Dakar (2022), and Berlin (2022). 

Artistic Director: Nikolaus Hirsch / Curators: Francis Carpentier, Silvia Franceschini / Press: Guilliana Venlet, g.venlet [​at​] civa.brussels, T +32 2 642 24 87.