Louise Verstraete
Surrounded by the city's energy, Louise Verstraete creates a living archive which she translates into textiles. Through her playful and intuitive approach, she challenges established conventions of space and material, transforming the banality of everyday life into an opportunity for artistic and reflective expression.
Louise Verstraete is a visual artist and textile designer whose multidisciplinary approach covers photography, scenography, performance, and textiles. She studied fine arts and graduated with a master's degree in textile design from the LUCA School of Arts in Brussels and then showcased her work in 2021 during Dutch Design Week. She participated in projects at venues such as FOMU in Antwerp, Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven and Motto Berlin. She exhibits her work in public spaces, on billboards, shop windows, flags or in spaces between the private and the public. After completing her studies, Louise lived and worked abroad, particularly in Berlin and Basel. These cities have had a major influence on her projects and practice, with the urban environment forming the basis of her research. As a MAD incubator resident, Louise strives to collaborate with other designers and continue to grow in an inspiring atmosphere.
“I like to think of public space as a common playground, my photo archive as an ever-expanding pool, and my working process as a circle—always in motion, always evolving, never quite finished.”
Louise Verstraete weaves together a living archive she calls The Island of Images, a space where photography, urban scenography and textiles intersect, merge and interact. Exploring the boundaries of textiles, she translates her photographs of urban spaces, such as graffiti, posters and typographic compositions, into textile work woven on jacquard looms. This process allows her to blend the immateriality of pixels with the materiality of fibres, creating the motifs directly with the material rather than printing or dyeing them on it. This approach, which emphasises the fundamental actions of textiles, such as weaving, sewing and joining, encourages a dialogue between visibility and concealment and adds a dynamic dimension to her work. Handcrafting becomes a form of expression and contributes to Louise's constantly evolving textile language.
The fluid and permeable boundaries between fiction and reality, between public and private space or between pixels and textile codes are an inspiration for Louise. She sees this public space not only as a passageway but also as an exhibition on its own. She uses its potential to question and reinvent the relationship between space, perception and interaction. Her ambition is to question and redefine the boundaries between art and design, exploring how these elements can transform our everyday experience. Her interest in scenography, theatre and contemporary art allows her to see creativity as a performative act, where each work becomes an invitation to see the world in a new light. Her work shows the subtle ways in which architecture shapes our everyday lives.
While the common mission of a designer is to provide solutions to specific problems, Louise Verstraete broadens this perspective by incorporating an experimental and creative dimension, thus redefining the very boundaries of the discipline. For her, design transcends mere problem-solving; it becomes an aesthetic and conceptual reflection on how objects interact (and therefore ourselves) with the environment, thereby altering the use and perception of spaces. Her creations, positioned at the intersection of art and design, invite reflection and dialogue, transforming everyday objects into true performative elements. One of her projects, for example, exemplifies this innovative approach. A carpet with a central perforation and Louise's signature red print, envelops a pillar, transcending its original function. It serves as a catalyst for interaction, redefining the surrounding landscape and encouraging viewers to reflect on the complex relationship between objects and their surroundings.
One of the most distinctive features of Louise Verstraete's work lies in the unique interaction she creates with her audience. This dynamic not only enriches her work, but also reveals its fluid, cyclical nature, in which art is seen as an infinite process, a creative circle without beginning or end. For Louise, each woven work, performance or photograph is an opportunity to explore new ideas, like a reservoir in which creative fragments accumulate, ready to be constantly reinterpreted. Her work shows the impact of urban scenography on our social interactions and daily movements. Textiles become a way to redefine, reconfigure and reveal different realities, through a constant dialogue between form, material and space.