Centrale presents Gao, a photo and video installation by Làzara Rosell Albear (09.10.2025 > 22.02.2026).

Làzara Rosell Albear (1971, Havana) lives and works in Brussels. She obtained an M.A. in audiovisual art from K.A.S.K. in Ghent. Her films and audiovisual creations have been projected in numerous festivals. She explores movement, migration, transformation, interactivity and its effects on the human condition. Her transdisciplinary projects range from performances to concerts, choreographies, films and installations exploring the experience of presence and the senses through interactivity with spectators. She mixes traditional techniques with the possibilities offered by digital tools and by 3D. For her installation at Centrale, Làzara Rosell Albear continues her work on Cuba, her native island. She focuses more specifically on the neighbourhood surrounding the house where she grew up (Gao means house or home in Cuban slang). The installation, created from recycled materials, incorporates photographs and videos and will be accompanied by a series of performances. 

“I no longer want to be a witness. And I do not want you to be just a spectator. This is a testimony I want you to experience. Like kids banging on pots when they are hungry, I welcome you to hit the sonic elements of the sculptural installation which will unchain/activate/set off a specific multi-sensorial trajectory. The island and its inhabitants will, sooner rather than later, drown in garbage mountains piled all over the city, invaded by disease and hunger than by the rising sea levels, if no one takes action. By unlearning, some have become entrepreneurs, some learn that they can live from waste recuperation.
Immersion and active participation in the collective struggle, “en la lucha”. This is the reply that Cubans tell when you ask them how they are doing. (…) Blackout. It was 20:30~. I’m sweating drops falling, running down my face and body, mosquitoes are kings, she says (as if it were the last breath) “there is no wind running” waving with her hand as if touching the invisible flowing air, sitting on a chair by the threshold of the open fenced door. The loud music stops constantly, connection is slow. No es facil. It’s exactly 23pm the light has come back. My niece stops the music and says ‘it’s enough for today’. No es facil. She thought the light was coming at midnight. My intuition was sharper this time. I placed the camera at 22:55.”

Written by Làzara Rosell Albear (in La Habana) while on blackout Friday 9/5/25

Performances 

 18 October 2025 during Museum Night Fever
7 February 2026 during the PhotoBrussels Festival
21 February 2026 during the closing event 

Centrale presents the exhibition Michel Couturier – la friche la galaxie (09.10.2025 > 22.02.2026).

At a time when cities and suburban areas are the focus of new policies, Michel Couturier’s images appear both surprising and familiar. They feature the elements that populate today’s urban landscapes: road signs, motorway lights, surveillance cameras, and building cranes slicing through the sky.

We discover in them the poetry of improbable spaces—their fragmented architecture, their horizons crossed by flocks of birds. Associated with these landscapes, with these still and moving images, are the words of Homer, Pavese, and Couturier himself. Evoked, too, are the ancient myths that inhabit these places—chosen, traversed, and recorded by the artist.

In these places, there is a joyful sparkle—here, the light on the sea; there, the movement of the river; here again, the gold leaf that transforms a banal object into a jewel.

Michel Couturier’s exhibition at Centrale, through his videos and drawings, celebrates the poetry that lies before our eyes—if only we take the time to look.

Centrale presents the exhibition Mitja Tušek & Bertille Bak – Wait and See (10.04 > 24.08.2025).

Unclassifiable and multifaceted, the work of Mitja Tušek enters into conversation with the videos of Bertille Bak, which are both engaged and ironic. With humor and seriousness, both artists question the image and representation.

Mitja Tušek‘s paintings and series are informed by references to the history of art and European culture, from the Middle Ages to Ensor and the Rorschach tests, whose forms recall the multitude of possible representations and perceptions of an image. Mitja Tušek’s paintings play with the codes of figuration and abstraction: figurative paintings touch on abstraction, while those that appear abstract often feature portraits or landscapes. The materials he uses contribute through their power of absorption or reflection to an ambiguous perception of the image; we guess at it more than we see it, and yet we retain an almost palpable presence. Several series of large-format canvases allow us to embrace the diversity of forms that Tušek’s painting takes. It shifts the gaze, questioning the image and its double, the medium and its materiality, starting with the smallest particle of image, almost the pixel, which is zoomed in and enlarged, gaining in density with the successive layers applied by the painter over the years.

For this exhibition at Centrale, Mitja Tušek has invited the artist Bertille Bak. As a video and visual artist, Bertille Bak takes a committed look at the world, focusing on personal and collective narratives, questioning both the day-to-day reality of the communities she encounters and the representations we make of them. Through her installations and videos, “Bak doesn’t seek to create an illusion of realism but attempts to reveal what goes on behind the scenes in the construction of any image and to warn the public, in a tender but madcap way, that art is only make-believe.” (Exhibition Abus de Souffle, 2024, Jeu de Paume, Paris).

Caroline Le Méhauté & Isabella Soupart
Tellus Project
Installation & dance
10.04 > 24.08.2025

Visual artist Caroline Le Méhauté and choreographer Isabella Soupart present Tellus Project, an installation-performance at the crossroads of art and biology, or bio-art. Bio-art is a contemporary art movement that uses the plastic resources offered by biotechnology as a medium. The project invites us to rethink our relationship with the living and to question our practices through art. Taking the earth beneath our feet as their starting point, the artists draw on the fact that 75% of our planet’s soil is now polluted. United by their shared concern for the environment and for materials, the duo is setting up in Centrale and is collaborating with a special material, polluted excavated earth.

Tellus Project is a research project initiated by Caroline le Méhauté. Based on this overwhelming observation, she is directing her research towards other practices. Phytoremediation is a gentle, slow method of helping to remedy this pollution. It involves the absorption of pollutants from the soil by hyper-accumulative plants, which are capable of filtering and degrading some of the pollutants. As well as being a symbolic and poetic act, creation can play a part in ‘care’, in building resilience in the living world.

In Tellus Project, choreographer Isabella Soupart invites a group of dancers to take turns in a physical, rhythmic and spellbinding test of endurance, interacting individually or collectively as they confront the polluted earth that can no longer be ‘hidden’: piles of earth are shaped, transformed, moved and sculpted in turn. The audience is invited to share in this unique and hypnotic experience, individually defining their own time dedicated to this performance. Tellus Project is a dazzling choreography of bodies and sculptures/installations, endlessly reconfigured.

Dancers : Elsa Tagawa, Marita Schwanke

Negociation 161 – Dear ground
2025
Contaminated excavated soil, water, phytoremediating plants, wood, fabric, horticultural lamps
Installation & dance
Installation activated on 09.04 by Caroline Le Méhauté and dancer Elsa Tagawa
& on 17.04 at 7pm and 8.30pm by dancer Elsa Tagawa

Negociation 162 – Hidden
2025
Excavated soil
Installation & dance
Installation activated on 16.05 at 1pm and 7pm by dancers Marita Schwanke
& on 24.05 at 4pm by dancers Marita Schwanke

Negociation 163 – Her skin
2025
Excavated soil
Installation & dance
Installation activated on 22.06 at 4pm by dancers Marita Schwanke

On the occasion of its reopening after refurbishing its spaces, Centrale presents the exhibition hosting (10.10.2024 > 09.02.2025).

hosting welcomes and celebrates the artistic diversity of the Brussels scene, opening up to the city, to its periphery, its artists and its audiences. The exhibition is presented as a large-scale cabinet of curiosities occupying all of Centrale’s spaces.

Inspired by the Summer Exhibition, an annual event held at the Royal Academy in London, hosting is an open call to Brussels-based artists of all generations and disciplines in the visual arts. The Brussels Art Centre is intent on welcoming artists from both the city’s center and its periphery, thus outlining the contours of a wider and more inclusive city, whose perimeter might be called, as says artist Pélagie Gbaguidi, the 20th commune of Brussels. The exhibition hosting questions the notions of hospitality, of territory, of solidarity and of emergence in today’s art ecosystem. Talks and performances will take place in connection with these questions.

The works are selected and curated by an artistic committee including guest artists Manon de Boer, Pélagie Gbaguidi, Juan Pablo Plazas and Richard Venlet, and Tania Nasielski, artistic director at Centrale.

A sale of the exhibited works is organized at Centrale, of which all proceeds go to the artists: a solidarity fund (20% of the proceeds) will be redistributed to all the exhibiting artists of hosting.

Artists :

Dareen Abbas, Özge Akarsu, Mohammed Alani, alias-nb, Nabil Aniss, Flavia Antoniazzi, Amaranta Aranda, Stephane Arcas, Mani Art, Yasmina Assbane, Krista Autio, Esther Babulik, Michèle Baczynsky, Bagnet, Koen Barra, Francesco Battistello, Marianne Behaeghel, Thomas Bernardet, Amélie Berrodier, Dani Bershan, Lucile Bertrand, Floris Boccanegra, Hugo Boccara, Edith Bories, Ariane Bosquet, Lucia Bru, Marc Buchy, Mirko Canesi, Marguerite Canguilhem, Frédéric Castiau, Louiz Castiella, Matthieu Chalmagne, Chameleonian Times, Clément Chantepie, Traian Cherecheș, Aliki Christoforou, Heather Clarke, Eva Claus, Florence Coenraets, Françoise Colpé, Suzanne Corcessin, Berenike Corcuera, Adeline Cros, Céline Cuvelier, Marta Dal Sasso, Amélie de Beauffort, Manon de Boer, Gert De Clercq, Karel De Cock, Hannah De Corte, Thomas De Decker, Yvonne De Grazia, Hamed Dehqan, Liesje De Laet, Brigitte De Mees, Ann De Nys, Eva Deceasstecker, Bernard Declercq, Gérald Dederen, Sara Del Bene, Rodolphe Delacourt, Deborah Deliens, Wolfgang Dengel, Yuna Denis, Ward De Ruddere, Ward Desloovere, Eli Desnot Marsan, Isabelle Detournay, Lena Dewaegenaere, Pablo Diartinez, Carlin Díaz, Thomas Dielman, Monique Dohy, Charlotte Dorn, Laura Dos Santos, Pétros Dourdoufis, Hughes Dubuisson, Celia Ducaju, Maria Dukers, Frédéric Dumoulin, Silio Durta, Lionel Dury, ECOLE MONDIALE (with Filip Van Dingenen), Hamada Elkept, Marius Escande & Sarah Illouz & Alexander Marinus, Élisa Espen, Marion Fabien, Gundi Falk, Lucia Femia, Brooke Ferguson, Colin Fincoeur, Anne Marie Finné, Igor Fouqueray, João Freitas, Philipp Fröhlich, Jean-Luc Gaffarel, Yannick Ganseman, Carmen Gayo Raton, Pélagie Gbaguidi, Pieter Geenen, Dirk Geets, Mark Gillioen, Clémence Godier, Maud Gourdon, Inès Guffroy, Elise Guillaume, Béatrice Guilleman, Fiona Guillemant, Luis Guzman, Ulla Hase, Elodie Hedouin, Michaël Henneaux, HIDDENBRILLAUD, Liliana Hoban, Camille Holdermann, Sophie Holmström, Brigitte Hoornaert & Stéfan Piat, Liudmyla Hots, Léon Huneau, Skender Hyseni, In Care Of, IOxOI, Victoria Iranzo, Chisato Ishiyama, Clément Jacques-Vossen, Marine Kaiser, Kled Kapexhiu, Kristell in Wonderland, Nancy La Rosa, Laurence Langlois, Sven Laurent, Raphaëlle Léaux, Julia Lebrao Sendra, Marie Fleur Lefebvre, Nicolas Magne Lefebvre, Ania Lemin, Lucas Loop, Luciana L. Schütz, Faber Lorne, Carole Louis, Hadrien Loumaye, Léo Luccioni, Anne Marie Maes, Lila Maitre, Lucie Malou, Thier Mans, Virgilio Martini, Nicolas Mayné, Thomas Mazzarella, Mélisande McBurnie, Hélène Meyer, Marie Michalikova, Marta Mo, Yukali Modéran, Hélène Moreau, Antoine Morice, Chrystel Mukeba, Anne Niveau, Rita Nobre, Christian Noirfalise, Ooops I Drew It Again, Marina Osadtchouk, Hamida Ouassini, Alice Pandolfo, Claudio Pantò, Flavia Parone, Adèle Pasquier, patrickvanghendt, BLAISE PATRIX, Pauvre Terre (Pauline Sesniac & Luca Reverdit), Sébastien Pauwels, Carmen Pazos Magariños, Nine Perris, Prune Perris, Dominique Piérard, Melissa Pinon, Nicolas Piret, plæd, Juan Pablo Plazas, Jérôme Porsperger, Céline Prignon, Anouk Rabot, Luka Rakol, Kamand Razavi, Alex Reynolds, Badi Rezzak, Marija Rinkeviciute, Matthias Roche, Lucas Roman, Jonathan Rosić, Amber Roucourt, Sandra Rouffignac, Valérie Rouillier, François Röze, Melissa Ryke, Elina Salminen, Patricia Sartori, Judith Scée, Valérian Schatten, Schizosteph, Amélie Scotta, Jimmy Scour, Anna Simon, Pierre Sohie, Lois Soleil, Nathan Solioz, Diane Stordiau, Straussphère, Laure Stroobandt, Merzedes Sturm-Lie, Laurent Suchy, TAMILA (Tengo Eminashvili), Malika Tarhach (malyqa), Erik Thys, Elio Ticca, Nina Tomàs, Morgane Trebus, Tim Trenson, ZETA TSERMOU, TUUURTLE (Dominique Raphaelle Ringler, Founder & Gaëtane Bibot & Sophie Lévy & Tania Wolski), Céline Vahsen, Anne van de Star, Charlotte Van de Velde, Ariane Van Dievoet, Leen Van Dommelen, Nadia van Gelder, Armand Van Mastrigt, Corin Vanden Berghe, Nathan Vandenberghe, luc vandervelde lux, Dimitri Vangrunderbeek, Lau Ve, Tatiana Vejic, Richard Venlet, Maj-Britt Verheijen Van Dyck, Laura Viale, Adèle Violette, Colin Waeghe, Antoine Waterkeyn, Susanne Weck, Saskia Weyts, WIP COLLECTIVE, Sarah Wouters, YAMABXL, Yonghi Yim, Anna Zanichelli, Eyad Zoudi.