ENCOUNTER(S), Prix Jeunes Artistes
Centre for innovation and design at Grand-Hornu
December 13, 2024 – April 13, 2025

Every year, the Young Artists Award organised by the Parliament of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation recognises an artist (or collective) under the age of 40 with a connection to the French Community of Belgium in the field of visual arts. In 2024, it is design that takes centre stage, encompassing all of this discipline’s different incarnations, from industrial design to craftsmanship, by way of ceramics and textiles. Young designers today are attempting to respond to climate issues and the need to act responsibly when it comes to our environment and our society. Maak & Transmettre, paulineplusluis, Thibault Huguet and Arnaud Eubelen have however decided to bring their differences together, combining their creations for some unlikely conversations and encounters.

Alice Emery, Mathilde Pecqueur and Salomé Corvalan use words and writing as tools to express their desire to create, turning thoughts into stories to evoke their memories and feelings. Maak & Transmettre’s intuitive approach to design results in everyday objects with a poetic twist: curtains featuring arches evocative of twilight, a tapestry with a window peeking through, a curvaceous colourful chair. Most of the pieces that do not feature tufting take on a theatrical role, inviting the user/audience to try them out by touching them, lying down on them and enjoying the physical experience of these architectural installations.

Thibault Huguet is inspired by a wide range of different areas, including shipbuilding and aeronautics, as well as fields that are even further removed from design, such as archaeology. His creations blend traditional craftsmanship with the limitations of industrial design so that they enrich one another. Some production processes involve unexpected techniques, such as the petrification of a shape in a source of water rich in calcite. This approach means that each piece provides a rich narrative, enhanced by every meticulously executed detail.

Image courtesy of Thibault Huguet

Image courtesy of Thibault Huguet

Image courtesy of Thibault Huguet

Arnaud Eubelen inhabits his creative world with sculptural objects made exclusively out of fragments of obsolete furniture, waste and unwanted building materials, collected during painstaking searches of our streets. All of these urban fragments have come together to form a repository of materials from which he sources the components of his creations. The results of this distinctive approach resemble everyday objects that deliberately disobey well-established rules for materials and how they are conventionally used. By deconstructing and then reassembling these recovered materials, Arnaud Eubelen blurs the boundaries between traditional categories of works of art and household objects. Thus he reveals the chaotic energy, the entropy of the urban mutations around us, creating a conversation between outside and inside, between the street and our personal space.

Image courtesy of A.Eubelen

Image courtesy of A.Eubelen

Image courtesy of A.Eubelen

Image courtesy of A.Eubelen

Attentive to their environment and scenes of ordinary life, paulineplusluis (Pauline Capdo and Luis Bellenger) capture images that resonate in our collective memory to interpret them through projects with great narrative force. To bring these images to life, they focus on ordinary, simple and inexpensive materials, often borrowed from other fields and then turned to unexpected uses. Simple, sensitive and poetic, their objects oscillate between craft and industry, sometimes finding their way through editions, notably Matière Grise, Deknudt Mirror, Hartô, Serax, sometimes self-publishing. Designed with great economy of means, the objects take advantage of the specific features of the materials and processes used to rationalise production and simplify assembly.

Image courtesy of paulineplusluis

Image courtesy of Deknudt Mirrors & paulineplusluis

Image courtesy of paulineplusluis

Image courtesy of paulineplusluis

Image courtesy of paulineplusluis

Lona Guilhot-Vitry, Marie Dassonville and Marjane Laâbas form a collective with complementary skills, covering various fields from interior architecture to object design. The focus of their practice is social innovation, with a greater emphasis on materials, their origin, and their life cycle in their thinking. During their studies and afterwards, they had the opportunity to work with a group of senior citizens on the theme of mobility, identifying a number of difficulties and unmet needs. These challenges often lead to isolation and a sense of insecurity among those who struggle to get around in public spaces. To address this, they designed a folding chair to be installed in public spaces, which can be fitted around existing signposts. La Chaise Solidaire can be used on a temporary basis, allowing passers-by to take a break during their journey at strategic locations. Thanks to its compact design, it can be placed on narrow pavements, making it complementary to urban benches. For the exhibition, two prototypes will be installed in the town of Boussu-Hornu, enabling the devices to be tested in real-life situations.

more. www.cid-grand-hornu.be