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The LODGERS programme is a collaboration between AIR Antwerpen and M HKA . We welcome imaginative artistic initiatives to come and occupy the 6th floor at M HKA. The programme offers a unique opportunity for public interface, to organisations and initiatives who focus specifically on producing and commissioning, and who do not have their own public space. These LODGERS might be publishers, commissioning agencies, research initiatives, labels, collectives, discussion platforms and other initiatives experimenting with artistic practice who would be interested to live, work and perform in Antwerp.

LODGERS are welcomed from "Eurocore" – the combined region of Benelux and the Rheinland. Free entrance to visit our LODGERS. Come and say hello!

The LODGERS programme is co-curated by Nav Haq, Senior Curator at M HKA, and Alan Quireyns, Artistic Director at AIR Antwerpen.

M HKA and AIR Antwerpen have invited Le Salon to be our fifth guest in the LODGERS programme, occupying the 6th floor of the museum for three months.

Le Salon is an editorial and curatorial platform aimed at presenting, documenting and reflecting on the Brussels contemporary art scene. Le Salon is a project initiated by Devrim Bayar and developed in close collaboration with Virginie Devillez and Valerie Verhack. Regular contributors and special guests are invited to contribute with reviews, interviews, studio visits or thematic texts published on welcometolesalon.be.

Admittedly, cats are everywhere! The cat has invaded the Internet, to the point of becoming one of the most requested search queries. Recently, Belgium showed its sense of irony by bombarding the web with... cats, during the dark hours of the "Brussels Lockdown". The initiative was hailed with a bowl of dry cat food by the national police!

Understandably, the cat has also infiltrated the field of art. Not only as a subject (for centuries painters have been depicting them) or as a painter itself (the book Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics addresses this question), but also as a fashion, or even as a movement. White Columns in New York scheduled a cat show in 2013 and Los Angeles followed suit with a crazier "West Coast" approach, while the Walker Art Center has an Internet Cat Videos festival. Today the cat receives an honorary place at M HKA.

The fetish animal of living rooms, the cat, receives all the attention in the programme Le Salon conceptualised for the LODGERS initiative at M HKA.

Residency : 04.03 – 17.04.2016
Preview 03.03 – 18.00-21.00
François Curlet Chaquarium
John M. Armleder Furniture Sculpture

A détournement expert, François Curlet (b. 1967 in Paris, lives and works in both Paris and Brussels) pushes art into the trenches of a society whose paradoxes he criticizes with humour. Created in 2003, the Chaquarium is a residency for a cat. In this installation, the predator switches place with its prey. Confronting this living installation, Le Salon presents a work from the Furniture Sculptures series initiated in 1979 by John M. Armleder (b. 1948 in Geneva where he lives and works). Combining references to art history and domestic space, this series deepens the artist’s reflection on the banalisation of art through the decorative and the quotation.

Lecture : 17.03 – 19.00
Laetitia Chauvin The Uncatty Show

This lecture will attempt an ‘unofficial’ history of the cat in art. Deliberately marginal and ironic, the question of the cat in art will allow to raise pressing contemporary questions about such subjects as the ‘Anthropocene’, new cults, extreme behaviour and domestic fetishisation. Laetitia Chauvin (b. 1977 in Paris) is freelance curator and art critic. A PhD researcher at La Sorbonne (Paris), she currently pursues research into aesthetics in the production modes of contemporary sculpture.

Exhibition : 08.04 – 17.04.2016
Preview 07.04 – 18.00-21.00
Three new works by Amanda Ross-Ho / Poesiviski Poeselovski / Eric Croes

Le Salon is inviting three contemporary artists to produce a new work in dialogue with John M. Armleder’s sculpture. In her installations, Amanda Ross-Ho (b. 1975, lives and works in Los Angeles) gathers together apparently mismatched media, including found objects, photographs, drawings, sculptures, paintings, and video clips. Her work seems to be driven by her urge to imbue these groupings of impersonal materials with individual identities. Poesivski Poeselovski is a ‘super cat’ born in Siberia in the 16th century who is widely known for his superior qualities as a poet, wine taster and philosopher. His followers and close friends will meticulously execute his plans to make an object for a ‘nano cat’. Finally, the ceramic sculptures of Eric Croes (b. 1978, lives and works in Brussels) reminds us simultaneously of outsider art and refined decorative sculptures. Often based on the animal kingdom, his works regularly mix art with everyday life.

The cat in the Chaquarium is the pet of one of our members of staff. The cat is looked after on a daily basis and will return to the member of staff’s home after the exhibition.

Come and meet our LODGERS and contribute to their activities

More information can be found at: Welcometolesalon.be 

Learn more about the programme via Facebook (M HKA, Le Salon) and Instagram (muhka_museum, welcometolesalon)

LODGERS is developed as a partnership between AIR Antwerpen and M HKA