08.03.25, 16:00, Ava Darvishi, When I Colored the Earth Bright

In my daily life—through my thoughts and struggles—living here in Ghent, far from my hometown, I find myself longing for the past. I miss the moments I can no longer experience, and the loss of a loved one feels like a heavy wave crashing over my mind. I seek to connect my experiences here with my memories, weaving together the past and present.

As I reflect, my struggle deepens. I think of those I have lost, which inspires me to write stories about them, recreating our moments together through pictures and words. It is my way of connecting with them, among all the time I lost and can never get back, or perhaps the only way.

This project was never a conscious decision; it has always been present in my thoughts, interwoven with my fears and anxieties. It is a work in progress one without a definite ending because the more I try to remember, the more stories I find to write. It is an ongoing exploration without an end.

Countless reasons pull me further from my past, but I am trying to push the boundaries of my mind, writing these moments down to erase even one of the thousand reasons that distance me.

Ava Darvishi

Ava Darvishi is a theatermaker and actress from Iran who is currently based in Ghent. She has been a member of Sada Ghent Playback Theatre since 2022. Ava has performed in several international projects, including Voicelessness, performed at Apparatus in Seoul in 2024, and Medea at the Bozar Institute in Brussels in 2018.

Ava Darvishi holds a BA in Acting from the Art and Architecture University in Tehran, an MA in Puppet Theater from the University of Tehran, and a postgraduate degree in Digital Storytelling from KASK & Conservatorium. She is currently pursuing studies in drama at KASK & Conservatorium.

Abstract Entities

Thomas Hitchcock's exhibition Abstract Entities serves as an open platform for temporary interventions by Belgian art students. Throughout the exhibition period, a multitude of interventions will unfold across various media, including performances, music, collective readings, talks, workshops, discussions, body practices, poetry, and screenings.

free

24.01.26 – 15.03.26,

Joost Pauwaert, KIOSKexpoAgendaArtistic activities

Once a year, KIOSK invites a Belgian artist for a solo exhibition in the space of the former Anatomical Theatre. On 24 January 2026, Joost Pauwaert opens his new exhibition, A Good Hammering.

Trained as a photographer and shaped by his background as a carpenter, Joost Pauwaert has become known for his bold kinetic sculptures, installations, and performances that balance on the threshold between power and vulnerability, destruction and beauty, technique and poetry.

For KIOSK, Pauwaert has created a large-scale installation in which heavy machinery, saw blades, and festive objects converge in an explosive visual language that evokes both wonder and unease. This new presentation promises to be an intense, physical experience that fully engages the unique character of the Anatomical Theatre.

Joost Pauwaert ’s work explores the relationship between power, beauty, and poetry, often infused with a playful, childlike curiosity. He integrates familiar and symbolic imagery that evokes both recognition and tension. Pauwaert is drawn to the aesthetic of the imposing and the monumental, balancing this with a sense of the caricatural and symbolic wonder that softens its intensity and opens up imaginative possibilities.

About Joost Pauwaert

Joost Pauwaert (1985, Bretzenheim, DE) works and lives in Wilrijk, BE. In the past years his works have been exhibited in numerous exhibitions during several gallery group and solo exhibitions at BARBÉ and other venues such at Ooidonk Art Festival, C-MINE in Genk, Art Brussels w/ Dauwens & Beernaert, Art Cologne w/ Galerie Eric Mouchet (FR), Archipel at Deweer Gallery Estate (Otegem), Art Rotterdam w/ BARBÉ, Ponti gallery (Antwerp), Pizza gallery (Antwerp), Gevaertsdreef (Oudenaarde), PASS kunstroute (Lede) and Emergent in Veurne. After his 2nd solo The End Is Near in 2024 accompanied by the performance Apocalyptic Triumph Parade, one of the sculptures was acquired by Museum of Deinze en De Leiestreek. He also participated in the debut exhibition of ABBY, the contemporary museum in Kortrijk (BE).

24.01.26 – 15.03.26,

Malgré Tout, KIOSKexpoAgendaArtistic activities

Centered on the notion of protocol, Malgré Tout is an exhibition in motion, grounded in transmission, activation, and participation. The four invited artists—Marthe Merckx, Vicente Fuenzalida Lafourcade, and LAB D (Lars Bernakiewicz & Andreas D’hondt)—act simultaneously as authors, performers, and mediators of works that are re-enacted, transformed, and reinvented across different contexts.

Within contemporary art, a protocol refers to a set of instructions, rules, or conditions that determine how a work is realized without necessarily fixing its final form. Drawing on musical scores, dance notation, conceptual art, and performance, this approach shifts attention from the object to the process, from the author to the performer, and from the artwork as a product to the artwork as potential.

The protocol introduces a degree of indeterminacy, repetition, and variation. Each activation becomes a singular interpretation, situated within a specific context and in relation to particular bodies, temporalities, and relationships. The work thus exists malgré tout—despite everything: despite constraints, deviations, translations, and misunderstandings.

As a point of departure, Marthe Merckx, Vicente Fuenzalida Lafourcade, and LAB D activated a work by stanley brouwn: the idea of a square measuring 26 × 26 cm. This square is the work itself—an outline, a potential space in which art can emerge. From this premise, the format was gradually expanded into an empty square of 208 × 208 cm, conceived as eight exhibition spaces within the space.

These squares do not function as boundaries, but as points of departure. The invited artists are allowed to exceed the contours of their assigned zone, provided that the work originates there. Crucially, the square must always remain visible, however minimally. The spatial scenography acts as a constant: the patchwork flooring and the red-and-white striped walls remain unchanged throughout the entire exhibition. This intervention was jointly realized by Merckx, Fuenzalida Lafourcade, and LAB D and functions as a fixed framework within which successive interventions take place.

Following a simple protocol, Merckx, Fuenzalida Lafourcade, and LAB D invited eight young artists. After a period of two weeks, each artist selects another artist to continue working in the same space. This process of transmission repeats itself until the end of the exhibition. In this way, a dynamic of handover emerges in which artists curate one another. The exhibition unfolds as a chain of choices, driven by attention, curiosity, and a pronounced love for the work of others. The viewer is thus offered insight into how artists look at one another—despite everything, malgré tout.

Taking place in KIOSK's side space, the exhibition is organized in collaboration with the artist Nefeli Papadimouli and the École nationale supérieure d’art de Bourges. Malgré Tout mobilizes student communities in Ghent and Bourges to propose protocol-based works or to activate protocol-based works conceived by their peers.

Invited artists