operating as a bridge between a multitude of divides.
Becoming Otherwise examines the material, social, and cultural dimensions of decay and repair. By inhabiting moments of rupture, Bierich and mountaincutters approach vulnerability as a condition through which new forms of existence can emerge. What happens when the unshakeable begins to falter? When the structures we took for granted—political, social, or even the ground beneath our feet—fall apart?
Join us for the opening of Becoming Otherwise on 24 January from 16h, with a live performance by Juli Bierich.
A geographically decentralised public programme accompanies the exhibition, with two events taking place in Brussels. Join us at The Green Corridor on March 15 and at celador on March 24. Across these sites, the artists allow their practices to intersect and blur, developing artistic and metaphorical processes based on trust—deliberately unsettling boundaries between disciplines, institutions, and contexts.
Made possible by IKA Mechelen, Kunsthal Mechelen, celador, The Green Corridor, and Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (VGC).
Graphic design by Septian Priyatna
Juli Bierich is a German-Japanese artist based in Antwerp. Her artistic performances explore the ‘In between’ of public and personal spaces, using various mediums, with a focus on wearable pieces. The body is serving as a necessary component to her work and can be regarded as a tool, that leaves and is also left with, traces of these live actions, functioning as a documentary canvas.
Julie Bierich graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and won the Art Antwerp Graduation Prize in 2024. She exhibited her project Brace, brace, at M HKA in collaboration with Emma Mann.
mountaincutters (b. 1990) is a hybrid identity, an artist’s collective working in Brussels. With a focus on in-situ sculpture, they draw on the connection between human beings and the environments they inhabit. Their steel structures, glass elements, ceramics, fabrics and organic materials, as well as their poems and copper circuits form temporary ecosystems, in which energy is channeled between the human, the organic and the inanimate. Their work has been presented in solo exhibitions show at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2023); Meessen Gallery, Brussels (2024); Centre d’Art Neuchatel (2022); La Verrière Fondation Hermes, Brussels (2021); and in group shows in different institutions such as Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, (2021); Kindred Spirit, Lisbon (2024); Kyiv Biennal, Vienna (2023). They are part of collections such as Plateforme 10 — Mudac, Lausanne, Middelheim museum & collection of the Flemish Community, Antwerp, Collection du FRAC PACA, Marseille.
CASTOR develops a program of duo exhibitions and events that join artists from different contexts, connecting organisations and audiences across the country and beyond.
More about the exhibition and opening will follow soon. Stay tuned!
A big thank you to IKA, who are making their spaces available.
During the following month, the CASTOR team will further refine its organisational structure and prepare its first projects during a residency at celador.