Event series
28.11.2026 — 30.05.2027
Département des Pièges
Exhibition and Metabolic Museum-University with Clémentine Deliss
With a nod to Brussels artist Marcel Broodthaers, Clémentine Deliss invites you to enter the Département des Pièges. Here, you will find a selection of unexpected artefacts and paintings from ten Brussels museums, as well as works by contemporary artists. From elaborate fishnets to hunting decoys, and trompe l’oeil paintings each exhibit relates to the concept of the trap. You are invited to study these diverse traps and participate in the “metabolic museum-university”.
With Département des Pièges, curator Clémentine Deliss invites you to closely study an unusual assembly of objects and paintings. These nets, snares, decoys and visual illusions all play on the concept of the trap or the lure. Rarely exhibited, they are loaned from the collections of ten Brussels museums, from the Design Museum Brussels and AfricaMuseum to the National Museum of Resistance and the Museum of Medicine. The diverse pieces are displayed alongside works by contemporary artists such as Guillaume Bijl, Kasper Bosmans, Laurent Dupont, Aline Bouvy, Pélagie Gbaguidi, Valérie Mannaerts, Miao Miao and many others whose practice also reflects on the idea of the trap.
The title pays tribute to the Département des Aigles, the fictional museum of Marcel Broodthaers, one of the leading surrealists and conceptual artists of the 1960s in Brussels and beyond. The mise-en-scène of the exhibition similarly invokes the merging of a museum and university into a "department" or faculty for visual thinking. At the centre of the room is a large table in the shape of a lung. Here, historical artefacts and contemporary works appear side by side, while paintings by Belgian and international artists from the 17th to the 21st century line the walls. An accompanying booklet provides additional information about the context of each exhibit. Take a seat in this Département des Pièges to create your own stories and connections, which might reveal something about the world at large.
With Département des Pièges, curator Clémentine Deliss invites you to closely study an unusual assembly of objects and paintings. These nets, snares, decoys and visual illusions all play on the concept of the trap or the lure. Rarely exhibited, they are loaned from the collections of ten Brussels museums, from the Design Museum Brussels and AfricaMuseum to the National Museum of Resistance and the Museum of Medicine. The diverse pieces are displayed alongside works by contemporary artists such as Guillaume Bijl, Kasper Bosmans, Laurent Dupont, Aline Bouvy, Pélagie Gbaguidi, Valérie Mannaerts, Miao Miao and many others whose practice also reflects on the idea of the trap.
The title pays tribute to the Département des Aigles, the fictional museum of Marcel Broodthaers, one of the leading surrealists and conceptual artists of the 1960s in Brussels and beyond. The mise-en-scène of the exhibition similarly invokes the merging of a museum and university into a "department" or faculty for visual thinking. At the centre of the room is a large table in the shape of a lung. Here, historical artefacts and contemporary works appear side by side, while paintings by Belgian and international artists from the 17th to the 21st century line the walls. An accompanying booklet provides additional information about the context of each exhibit. Take a seat in this Département des Pièges to create your own stories and connections, which might reveal something about the world at large.
