Closing event

Not to despair about the past. Not to forget. To keep knowing that there are mysteries and secrets. To yearn for spectacular suns. 

In December BAYA Collective suggested an open call for the restless, questioning how they could put forth a collective process that transcends internal and external limits. Questioning what happens when our imagination and yearning aren’t weaponised against us, but instead tried as a tool to expose the portal towards collective freedom.

In February, Amina Abouelghar, Asma Laajimi and Tine Deboelpaep entered the conversation while the Kaaistudios became home to a collective unravelling of these questions as notes on home, rest, hibernation and dystopia were left behind. During a two-week residency, a guided trajectory was set up that emphasised the importance of nurturing a process of reciprocity and carving out working environments where concepts of care and community are unravelled and explored together.

On Friday May 9th, BAYA Collective, Amina, Asma and Tine invite you to the Kaaistudios for a communal scenography where the approach of each individual is activated and multiple portals get to be navigated in a setting where reciprocity and care are explored together. 

Tine Deboelpaep
A Hibernation Ill-Spent

A Hibernation Ill-spent is a lecture performance in the midst of its creative process. It embraces the embarrassment of the unmistakable mess that emerges the moment one dares to hibernate as an artistic approach — within a world that is switched ‘on’ 24/7.

Asma Laajimi
Winds Blow Counter

This immersive installation unfolds within and around the artist's rented home - a decaying Art Nouveau house in Brussels once built as a symbol of bourgeois elegance, now inhabited by layers of neglect, memory, and contradiction. Through film, performance, sound, and text, the house becomes both a literal and metaphorical site of haunted architecture and historical residue, where floral-painted walls, collapsing staircases, and unresolved colonial histories take on lives of their own.

Amina Abouelghar
When Sleep Unfolded Her

Almost full moon in an arid mountain landscape. A young woman waters her flowering plants. She is at one with her silence. When sleep enfolds her on the broken earth, she is transposed home.

• When BAYA Collective was founded in 2018, the founders were fuelled by the desire to bring forward a new tide within their community to develop and mould a realm that connects creative individuals through collaborative processes. BAYA believes in slowly adjusting the rhythms of our society through collective work, cultural & artistic exploration and the cultivation of intentional spaces - both on a physical and digital level.

• Born in 1999, Asma Laajimi is a Tunisian filmmaker and visual artist based in Brussels. Following studies in graphic design and photography, she graduated from LUCA School of Arts in Brussels with an MA in Film. Working across film, photography, installation, performance, and text, Asma’s multidisciplinary practice is rooted in her lived experience, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, the intimate and the political, the personal and the collective. Her work has been showcased at international film festivals including Locarno Film Festival (CH), Cinemed Montpellier (FR), JCC Carthage Film Festival (TN), and Breedbeeld Kortfilm Festival (BE), as well as in art institutions such as KIOSK Gent (BE) and Argos Audiovisual Art Center (BE).

• Amina Abouelghar is a dancer and choreographer based between Brussels and Cairo. She graduated from the Cairo Contemporary Dance Center and has co-created the Cairo-based dance duet Nafaq. Her work has been shown in several festivals such as NEXT, Festival de Marseille, Indiscipline Festival, etc... In 2023, she worked on her first solo Young Dreams along with Swiss-Iraqi musician Laure Betris. At the moment, she is working on her next piece Birds Cries, an ode to rhythms, composition, and improvisation.

• Tine Deboelpaep (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist. Her current research focuses on how our ideas of self-reliance and well-being have been historically shaped by predominant political and economic conditions. These inter­ests man­i­fest them­selves through (inter­ac­tive) sculp­tures, instal­la­tions, lecture performances and participative performances, which explore alternative ways of interdependence and community building. Her methodology is guided by intersectional feminism, disability justice and dramaturgical principles. She is committed to artistic development as a process rooted in interconnectedness and exchange. In addition to her practice, she actively engages in artistic support work, contributing her expertise in policy-making, coordination and guidance of creative processes to artist-run initiatives, organizations, and individual artists.