Exhibition programme 2025

NW is an open house for contemporary art and film along the quays in Aalst. Working closely with artists, we offer an engaging, collaborative program. Our focus is on artistic development with an eye on the city, the region, and the rest of the world—at the intersection of the local and the global. This year, NW again introduces a plurality of projects, film programs and events.

Spring exhibitions
Opening: Friday, February 7, 2025 / Exhibition: February 8–April 21, 2025.

Joy Boy, a tribute to Julius Eastman 
Collectif Faire-Part, Victoire Karera Kampire, Fallon Mayanja, Mawena Yehouessi, and Benjamin Mengistu Navet

Julius Eastman (1940-1990) was an African American minimalist composer, pianist, vocalist, and performer whose ‘organic music’ offered social and political commentary. Joy Boy is a three-room audiovisual installation paying tribute to Eastman’s life and music, bringing together visual and sound interpretations by artists Rob Jacobs, Victoire Karera Kampire, Fallon Mayanja, Benjamin Mengistu Navet, Paul Shemisi, Mawena Yehouessi, and Anne Reijniers.

Prologue
Ula Sickle
Prologue is the first part of A Choreographic Exhibition by Polish Canadian artist Ula Sickle (b.1978, Toronto, Canada). Taking place on Saturday, May 3, and Sunday, May 4, the exhibition will transform NW’s building with live performances created between 2018 and 2024. In Prologue, Sickle highlights the central role of photography in shaping her choreographic practice. 

Info~Angel
Over the Water
The first episode of the three-part archival exhibition series on ‘Aalst Rechteroever’ (Aalst Right Bank) examines the neighborhood’s development through the lens of the river and its residents. Drawing inspiration from the Info~Angel group and the Centre for Societal Renewal, Info~Angel is a series of exhibitions that illuminate the histories of NW, Aalst and the Dender region.

Exhibition: April 3–4, 2025

A Choreographic Exhibition 
Ula Sickle
In her interdisciplinary choreographic practice, Ula Sickle draws on visual art, music, and contemporary culture at large to explore everyday life under the conditions of late capitalism. A Choreographic Exhibition will animate NW’s building on Saturday, May 3, and Sunday, May 4, with a selection of live performances created between 2018 and 2024.

Summer exhibitions
Opening: Friday, June 6, 2025 / Exhibition: June 7–September 28, 2025 

Tender, Trivial, Totemic Table Talks 
Fernando Marques Penteado
Fernando Marques Penteado (b.1955, São Paulo, Brazil) presents Tender, Trivial, Totemic Table Talks, an exhibition that weaves together found elements from Aalst into a cohesive aesthetic experience. Reflecting on his process, Penteado shares: “After collecting facts, stories, and panoramas in Aalst through a sensitive, adrift manner, it became clear to me that NW’s exhibition space should boldly celebrate the surrounding aesthetics. In other words, it’s an invitation to let forgotten, disregarded objects play live again.” 

Info~Angel
Common Ground
In 2012, the City of Aalst commissioned a vision for ‘Kern Rechteroever’ where NW is located. Architecture Workroom Brussels and 51N4E proposed the concept of a Common Ground—a shared infrastructure imagined to mediate spatial and socio-economic entanglements. Over a decade later, the vision remains dormant. What might reignite this stalled conversation?

Fall exhibitions
Opening: Friday, 12 September 2025 / Exhibition: September 13, 2025–January, 2026

Lisa Vlaemminck
In her work, Lisa Vlaemminck (b. 1992, Brussels, Belgium) explores the boundaries of painting, creating an exciting, vibrating and disorienting universe. Over the past year, Vlaemminck has collaborated with care recipients at Psychiatric Centre Ariadne to create a series of new ceramic works. This participatory project bridges art, culture, heritage, and care, creating cultural engagement for communities with limited access to such experiences. 

Opening: Friday, October 31, 2025 / Exhibition: November 1, 2025–March, 2026 

Pauline Curnier Jardin
Pauline Curnier Jardin (b. 1980, Marseille, France) uses cinematic narrative, installation, sculpture, and performance to create immersive environments that challenge dominant norms and stereotypes. With a mix of wild humor and rich visual aesthetics, her work deconstructs assumptions about women and marginalized communities. Drawing from history, mythology, religion, and folklore, Curnier Jardin stages her art through diverse methods of narrative and spectacle. Her installations serve as stages for films where entertainment and violence are intertwined. In these spaces, women’s bodies become both the site of power’s exercise and instruments through which power is wielded and subverted.

Ongoing programme
Lokaal Dendy: Kitchen Stories and Lokaal Solidair
Lokaal Dendy is NW’s ground-floor space, combining a café, open kitchen, and adaptable areas for work, play, talks and workshops. It serves as a dynamic platform for the circulation of ideas, practices, and solidarities.
At the core of Lokaal Dendy is Kitchen Stories, a programme that extends beyond food preparation to engage with the cultural, political, and ecological dimensions of harvesting and cooking. 

In parallel, Lokaal Solidair—a program line within Lokaal Dendy—envisions solidarity as a lived, ongoing practice. This counter-space amplifies the voices of resistance and resilience, particularly those from Palestine and other communities facing displacement and occupation, through screenings, workshops, and gatherings that create space for connection, reflection, and action.

NW Cinema
Our film programme is grounded in the same mission of artistic development. To us, film is a realm for exchange, dialogue and community building. Collaborating with artists, curators, partners and local residents, we curate thematic focus programmes ranging from artist films and documentaries to archive films and art-house cinema. 

NW is supported by Flanders State of the Art and the City of Aalst.