Alice Zitelli & Samira Alirezabeigi, KunstenbibliotheekexpoAgendaArtistic activitiesFugitive Pages began as a gesture anchored in Black History Month. As the artists’ book collection was explored, a rupture emerged: out of nearly two thousand books, only five could be identified as authored by African-descendant artists. What began as a necessity became a site of transformation. With the support of the Kunstenbibliotheek, 1M³ expands beyond the existing collection, welcoming books already present alongside new commissions intended to enter it, not as symbolic corrections, but as required gestures.
Guided by the thought of Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, this cubic metre operates as a site of fugitive planning: a space that inhabits the academy without fully belonging to it. Moving quietly through its gaps and constraints, it cultivates forms of study, care, and connection that resist, expand, and seek to do better, working within institutional power without seeking its recognition.
Within the space, these shelves function as a parallel network for learning, circulation, and knowledgemaking. The books are not silent; they carry weight, absence, and the promise of continuity. At the centre sits a measured void: a shelf holding exactly the number of books initially present, rendering a glass ceiling visible and making countable the invisible barriers that shape the limits of recognition, authorship, and institutional space.
Across the vitrine, voices converge – diasporic, African, American, British, Francophone – entering into dialogue. The book becomes a site of circulation, a place where histories meet without hierarchy.
Visitors are invited to leave traces: names, references, absences still felt within the institution. Each note gestures toward future acquisitions, toward presence yet to come.
This vitrine does not claim completeness. It insists on attention, on making absence felt, on building a library that listens, shifts, and grows in relation — a space of care, reflection, and collective possibility.
Charlotte Frenay
Charlotte Frenay is a Brussels-based researcher working on alternative archival practices. She holds a BA in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths, University of London, and later completed an MA in African Studies at Ghent University. She is currently enrolled in the postgraduate Curatorial Studies at KASK & Conservatorium for 2025–2026.
As If More Could Save UsexpoAgendaArtistic activitiesAs If More Could Save Us emerges from the inhabitation of Curatorial Studies 2025-2026 in Kunsthal Gent. As one of the main partners of Curatorial Studies, Kunsthal Gent has hosted exhibitions from the postgraduate program since 2023. Building on this ongoing collaboration, this year’s exhibition is shaped by the building’s spaces, its internal dynamics, and both existing and new works. It takes place from 29 May to 28 June, 2026.
At the heart of Kunsthal Gent lies the story of Sarah Winchester, the heiress to a weapon manufacturer’s fortune, who relentlessly expanded her house with its endless rooms under the belief that she was haunted by restless spirits. Her house, with its endless rooms, staircases leading nowhere and looping corridors, translates as a ritual of building in response to uncertainty.
Mirroring this spatial imagery, Kunsthal Gent itself reads like a manuscript constantly written and rewritten; a fragmented landscape in which exhibitions unfold over time. After being built as a carmelite monastery in the 13th century, the building which now houses Kunsthal Gent underwent many transformations from opera storage to archaeological museum, and even to a squatting site.
In the spirit of Sarah Winchester, As If More Could Save Us reintroduces a selection of objects from STAM – Ghent City Museum to Kunsthal Gent, where they were previously exhibited during a time when the site still served as an archaeological museum, alongside objects from Huis van Alijn, which enter this context for the first time. Placing the past alongside the present, this ever-changing environment also gains an additional layer through contemporary works by Danai Anesiadou, Pélagie Gbaguidi, Mélina Ghorafi, Leto Keunen, Susu Laroche, Pàpoo Thibau and Julie Vanlook.
By bringing together historical objects, contemporary artworks and the spatial complexity itself, As If More Could Save Us explores how meaning is never fixed but continuously renegotiated. The exhibition builds on this evolving structure. Each space is shaped by what came before; a layering of gestures and intentions across centuries. Things accumulate here, like they always have.
Curators
Eline Adriaensen, Samira Ali Reiza Beigi, Houda Ben Azzouz, Anna Bruni, Cristina Carnelos, Alex Celis, Emma Crombé, Anaïs Du Champs, Tess Ego, Youssef Elkhiar, Zinnia Fay Fay, Nora Franco, Charlotte Frenay, Val Holfeld, Théo Jack Scherer, Bruna Martins, Antoine Meffre Chol, Sutanee Panyajai, and Alice Zitelli.
Supported by
curatorial studies and Kunsthal Gent
Many thanks to
Sonia D’Alto, Laura Herman, Isabel Van Bos and Curatorial Studies KASK Team; Valentijn Goethals, Danielle van Zuijlen, Jana Vasiljević, Tomas Lootens, Aike Roodenburg, Bert Bossaert, Klaartje Van Thuyne, Jens Wijnendaele, Tim Bryon, Mark Kokotov and Kunsthal Gent Team; STAM Ghent and Huis van Alijn.
Classical music, MIRY Concert hallconcertAgendaArtistic activitiesOur classical music students hone their skills until they are ready for their exam recitals. You can attend this joyous occassion, as the exam concerts of master’s students of classical music and composition are open to the public. Postgraduates musical performance practice will also spoil your ears. All concerts take place in our very own MIRY Concert Hall.
Drama, KASK DramadramaAgendaArtistic activitiesDuring the Drama Festival, drama master’s students present their graduation work. Offbeat and classical drama, crossovers, performances and multidisciplinary work can be seen at various locations in Ghent. The Drama Festival runs from 15 to 20 June 2026.
MastersoundsconcertAgendaArtistic activitiesMastersounds is known among connoisseurs as the holy grail of up-and-coming musical talent. During this festival, part of Graduation 2026 at KASK & Conservatorium, graduating students in jazz, pop and music production present their own projects. Between 15 and 25 June 2026, they will shake the foundations of the Minard theatre and De Centrale. They were preceded by Ramkot, Balthazar, Tomàn, Senne Guns, Douglas Firs, Nordmann, Amatorski, Faces on TV, Shht, Yong Yello, Loverman, Iskander Moon... In addition, every year we celebrate the birth of the new Masterworks LP, a compilation album that brings together all that talent. Get your copy at the festival.
Rudolf Arnheim has shown that the content of a modern art work (what it is about) is largely based on its specific formal properties (composition, material, color use, etc.), i.e. not on what is represented but how it is represented. I want to examine if this thesis is also valid for contemporary art. This is not so obvious as contemporary art often has a conceptual dimension that is not immediately detectable in the formal aspects of the work.
