Drawing from seemingly endlessly proliferating word sequences—which arise from a single word through a simple rule and through association—Veva Leye creates montages that present the same words in completely different ways. Uncannily coagulating, these word images expand and contract in an accordion-like movement. A similar rhythm characterizes Jelle Martens’ (photo)graphic registrations that combine fragments, reproductions and trivial observations into layered prints and drawings. Every print layer, every drawing operates as a temporary frame bringing together images that only temporarily solidify, overlap, and fall apart again. Image and language tumble along, stumble upon. Letters form words form images reading looking.

In The Cellar (and our faces, my heart, brief as photos), Duccio Viani transforms Het Paviljoen into a domestic cellar brought to the surface: a space of accumulation filled with photographs, letters, postcards and other traces of individual and family histories.

Starting from his own family archive, Viani expanded his research into family cellars and their contents, exploring what he describes as an ecology of the self. As the apparent order of the archive begins to collapse, photographs and documents are exposed to humidity, decay and transformation. What was preserved as evidence of individual lives gradually loses its structure and becomes matter.

The installation is extended by Compost, a collaborative sound piece by Alex Celis and Duccio Viani. Moving between descent and ascent, water and vegetation, decomposition and renewal, the work imagines the cellar as part of a larger cycle in which memories, images, bodies and environments continually change form.

Through The Cellar and Compost, Viani and Celis immerse us in this cycle of accumulation, decay and transformation, asking what remains of the things we preserve—and what might emerge when we allow them to decay. 

Duccio Viani

Duccio Viani is a visual artist based between Brussels and Florence. With a background in academia, linguistics and literature, his practice spans painting, mixed media and photography. Working primarily with photographs and paper, he explores the passage of time, material decay and the impermanence of images and objects. Rather than treating photography as a means of preservation, Viani approaches photographic prints as material to be manipulated, degraded, transformed and recycled.

Alex Celis

Alex Celis is a Chilean researcher, curator and interdisciplinary creator with a background in philosophy. Working across writing, documentary film, sound and visual media, he combines theoretical inquiry with artistic experimentation. His current research centres on curating violence and curating decay, exploring how encounters with images and materials can disrupt perception and provoke critical reflection.

Curated by Houda Ben Azzouz

Houda Ben Azzouz is a Brussels-based artist and researcher working across visual and curatorial practices. With a background in journalism, information design, cultural and curatorial studies, her work examines how visual, symbolic, and spatial forms shape narratives and meaning. Working across visual, spatial, and written forms, she explores the often-unspoken frameworks that influence how we see, understand, and relate to the world around us, with particular attention to what becomes visible, accessible, and valued within cultural contexts.