Gladys Sauvage

For Centrale | vitrine, Gladys Sauvage is questioning our relation with gesture and with the power to create by proposing a performative and evolving installation. A few streets away from the Grand-Place, the birthplace of lace-making, she creates a bobbin lace within the vitrine, just like Brussels’ lacemakers.

At the end of the 19th century, lacemakers still played with their bobbins in Brussels’ shop windows. The industrial era, followed by automatisation has made this craft almost obsolete. No longer profitable, lacemakers disappeared.

Gladys Sauvage builds her lace loom specifically for Centrale | vitrine. Designing and building her work tool is a way for the artist to reappropriate this craft. As an extension of her hands, she becomes one with her lace loom. Through this yesteryear technique and slow gesture, Gladys Sauvage questions the concept of mass production and profitability.

The lace or mycelium spreads throughout the vitrine. The artist is working there in real time at different dates: September 19 and 20, October 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 and November 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17.

Gladys Sauvage (1995, FR), lives and works in France.

Gladys Sauvage graduated with a Master’s degree in Tapestry and Textile Arts from the Académie royale des Beaux-arts de Bruxelles in 2020. She also acquired the Fashion Designer certificate at the Atelier Chardon Savard in Nantes. Bobbin lace is the medium at the heart of her artistic practice.