Risquons-Tout

Risquons-Tout

12.09.2020 - 10.01.2021

Risquons-Tout is an ambitious, thematic group exhibition that explores the potential of transgression and unpredictability. It examines how art challenges the homogenisation of thought in the now infamous echo chambers of our overcrowded info-sphere.

Risquons-Tout presents some of the most innovative and influential artists and authors from the Eurocore region, which extends between Amsterdam, Paris, Cologne, Düsseldorf and London, with Brussels at its centre. The title is borrowed from a place located on the Belgian-French border, a real yet liminal space of transition, passage and informal exchanges, notably smuggling. The invited artists negotiate different dynamics of bridging, passing, translating and transgressing. In doing so they burst the safe bubbles generated by prediction algorithms, designed to avoid any risk, whether intellectual, financial, emotional or physical. The exhibition’s geographic and political scope addresses today’s global connectivity, trans-national circulation and diasporic movements.

Risquons-Tout will occupy the entire WIELS building and range out into neighbouring exhibition and performance spaces. It will present the works of 38 internationally recognised or emerging artists. The exhibition proposes a rich array of practices that defy easy categorisation. Risquons-Tout will also include a performative section and an Open School that will serve as a laboratory for artists and scholars to draw upon questions of risk, unpredictability and borders through a range of alternative methods for the transmission of knowledge.

It is precisely the Internet that increasingly ties its users together into a single information-processing system that functions as a global “nervous system”
Srecko Horvat and Alphie Brown, Advancing Conversations: Srecko Horvat – Subversion! (Alresford: Zero Books, 2017), pp. 57-63.

Artists
Ed Atkins, Neïl Beloufa, Manon de Boer & Latifa Laâbissi, Peter Buggenhout, CATPC / Irene Kanga, Julien Creuzet, Shezad Dawood, Jean D.L., Lise Duclaux, Esther Ferrer, Jef Geys, Manuel Graf, Kati Heck, Lubaina Himid & Magda Stawarska-Beavan, Heide Hinrichs, Isaac Julien, Melike Kara, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Suchan Kinoshita, Tarek Lakhrissi, Ghislaine Leung, Bernd Lohaus, Christian Nyampeta, Sophie Nys, Lydia Ourahmane & Alex Ayed, Panamarenko, Laure Prouvost, Sina Seifee, Philippe Van Snick, Mounira Al Solh, Monika Stricker, Sturtevant, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Nora Turato, Evelyn Taocheng Wang.

With interventions and performances by Ed Atkins (UK), Manon De Boer (IN/NL/BE) & Latifa Laâbissi (FR), Jean De Lacoste (BE), Cherish Menzo (NL), Christian Nyampeta (UK/RW/NL), Laure Prouvost (FR/BE), Mounira Al Solh (LB/NL), Nora Turato (HR/NL) and Tarek Lakhrissi (FR).

The Open School section is composed of the projects Intersections of Care by Loraine Furter and Florence Cheval, with Sofia Caesar, Laurie Charles, Clémentine Coupau, Julianae (Juliana Vargas Zapata and Juliane Schmitt), Josèfa Ntjam and Golnesa Rezanezhad. ; Eden Studies by Astrocyte Studio with Cédric Noël, Mira Sanders, Joachim Olender, Laure Cottin Stefanelli, Anaïs Chabeur, Pauline Hatzigeorgiou and FieldStation Studio.; and CLEA Open School by Centre Leo Apostel, VUB.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Fonds Mercator/Mercatorfonds and designed by Harrison. The book features essays and interviews by Dirk Snauwaert, Emanuele Coccia, Marina Vischmidt and Vivian Ziherl, as well as a wide range of reproductions of works.

Curators: Dirk Snauwaert in collaboration with
co-curators Zoë Gray and Devrim Bayar, associate curator Helena Kritis
for the performative section, and Sofia Dati as curatorial assistant.