Bringing together five BeCraft artists, Giuseppe Arnone, Chloé Girten, Louise Limontas, Sébastien Lenouvel and Morgane Saladin, the “Mascarade” exhibition explores the connections between contemporary creation and fine craftsmanship through an imaginary performance populated by textile forms, embroidery and ceramics. Inspired by Marc Chagall’s free and cross-disciplinary universe, the exhibition transforms matter into a space for metamorphosis, experimentation and storytelling.
“Mascarade” is presented as part of the museum’s “Marc Chagall. Matières” exhibition, which brings together more than 200 works and documents tracing the diversity of the artist’s practice and the essential role played in his work by materials, craft techniques and collaborations.
Curated by BeCraft in collaboration with co-curators Ambre Gauthier and Cecilia Braschi
Giuseppe Arnone
Born in La Louvière in 2000, Giuseppe Arnone is a Belgian-Italian visual artist who graduated from ARTS² in Mons. His practice spans textile art, drawing, sculpture, painting and murals. Informed by his personal and family history, his work examines representations of the body, the diversity of genders and sexualities, and the tensions between individual identity, cultural heritage and social norms.
In his installations, sculptures and textile pieces, figurative forms merge with abstraction to create a space for transformation and emancipation. Working with techniques including sewing, punch needle and tapestry, he uses the flexibility and malleability of materials as a metaphor for bodies and identities in a constant state of evolution.
Chloé Girten
Chloé Girten is a Belgian artist who lives and works in Brussels. Trained in animation at KASK in Ghent, she subsequently studied ceramics at the Institut Européen des Arts Céramiques in Guebwiller, France. Her background in moving images and clay informs a practice in which sculpture becomes a space for storytelling.
Inspired by animism, the animal world and popular imagination, her work brings objects and figures to life, imbuing them with personalities of their own. Birds, ponies, plants and undefined creatures inhabit a universe that is both familiar and strange, infused with humour and fantasy. Her pieces explore the relationships between function and sculpture, reality and wonder, inviting us to look at everyday objects from a new perspective.
Louise Limontas
Born in 1987, Louise Limontas is a textile artist and designer who graduated from La Cambre in 2013. She lives and works in Brussels. Her practice is rooted in experimentation and the combination of craft and industrial techniques, including weaving, knitting, embroidery, lace-making, printing and laser cutting.
Through surfaces, volumes, wearable objects and ornamental objects, she explores the intimate connections between the body, the home and memory. Encounters and participatory creation also play an important role in her approach. She gathers stories, sensations and memories and translates them into textile matter, weaving connections between past and present, domestic space and identity. Her works are often made from collected yarns or materials sourced from industrial deadstock.
Sébastien Lenouvel
Sébastien Lenouvel is a French artist who lives and works in Brussels. His practice encompasses a range of media, including drawing, engraving, lithography, video, ceramics and embroidery. Deeply committed to traditional craftsmanship, he has spent several years developing a body of research centred on thread, which he approaches as a fully fledged pictorial material.
In his works, threads overlap and intertwine like brushstrokes, gradually shaping a face, a gaze or a gesture. Hand-embroidered on felt, his pieces are often combined with carved wooden elements to create wall-mounted works or three-dimensional sculptures. Moving between figuration and expressive colour, they leave ample room for the viewer’s perception and interpretation.
Morgane Saladin
Morgane Saladin is a ceramic artist based in Braine-le-Château. Inspired by the metamorphoses of living forms, her practice explores the relationships between the body, sexuality, identities and social norms, while questioning the ways in which human beings transform their environment.
The inherent slowness of the ceramic process lies at the heart of her work and resonates with the cycles of living organisms. By modelling stoneware, she creates hybrid objects and sculptures that oscillate between the familiar and the strange, attraction and repulsion, desire and discomfort. By subverting aesthetic conventions and familiar forms, she humorously questions notions of good taste, kitsch and the grotesque, inviting viewers to reconsider their own aesthetic boundaries.
Marc Chagall - Matières Exhibition
Original and impossible to categorise, Marc Chagall’s work (1887-1985) drew on a wide range of references, rooted both in his cultural background and in his experiences in Russia, France and the United States. Through more than 200 works and documents, the “Marc Chagall. Matières” exhibition reveals the essential role that materials, craft techniques and traditional and popular forms of knowledge played in his creative practice.
Beyond painting, Chagall explored engraving, ceramics, sculpture, stained glass, tapestry and theatre, developing close creative relationships with the craftspeople who worked alongside him. In dialogue with the collections of the Museums of the City of Mons and a selection of contemporary works by BeCraft artists, the exhibition shows how these practices and collaborations transformed his artistic language and enriched his imagination.
Information
- 10.10.2026 > 14.02.2027
- Tuesday → Sunday | 10:00 → 18:00
- CAP (Pillared Hall)
- 8, rue Neuve 7000 Mons
- becraft.org
Production
- BeCraft, as part of the “Marc Chagall. Matières” exhibition (produced by CAP, the City of Mons and the Wallonia-Brussels Federation)
- Mascarade > With the support of Transcultures
- Visual > Louise Limontas
