Contact

e-mail: cielgrommen@hotmail.com
signal: cielgrommen

Happy to be part of

Seasonal Neighbours, a collective of artists and designers,  interested in issues of agriculture, cohabitation and seasonality in Europe’s countryside︎︎︎
Jubilee, an artist-led platform based in Brussels, supporting each other in developing artistic research and collective practices, while engaging in “instituting” as an art form: reflecting and creating the infrastructures like a mapping web platform, artist contracts, rethinking artist residencies... ︎︎︎
Areaal, an exchange platform on art in rural space, led by Plan B︎︎︎
Pedagogy as lover’s craft, a research cluster at LUCA school of arts, looking at art practices as educational processes, with love as a driving force (formerly called: Art, Pedagogy and Society)

A practice of habitation, some keys...

Critical, spatial and social
My artistic practice deals primarily with space. I am very interested in the living together, which is why the projects are strongly social and public in nature.
I first studied architecture at KU Leuven (with a focus on urbanism) and am still very interested in its matters-of-concern. But I also did a master in fine arts at the HEAD of Geneve, where I learned to embrace criticality and the possibility to include doubts and exchange in spatial practice.

Methodology
As a methodology, I “research-by-habitation”: what I understand as is a conscious engagement with a particular context, to spend time there and to interact with its inhabitants, to participate in activities, to understand its belief systems and regime, to learn about its narratives from the past and its aspirations for the future... With constructions, events, maps, books, stories, conversations, lecture performances, I subsequently try to weave new narratives into these spaces and test out alternative ways of living-together, inhabiting, and relating to our environments.
I am not afraid of working in complex contexts where art experiments are not evident, but I know that it takes time, especially to gain trust. I like to build something in space, but I adapt my medium to the circumstances and context.

To avoid the loneliness of research, I prefer to work in close collaborations with peers. Maximiliaan Royakkers ︎︎︎, Clémentine Vaultier︎︎︎ and Maxime Brygo ︎︎︎ are my closest collaborators at the moment, but there are many more, and I am always happy to collaborate with new people and to learn about other perspectives.

Focus
In the past I have had a great focus on extraterritorial spaces, inspired by Giorgio Agamben’s writings about the ‘state of exception’. I elaborated projects in and on Husn, a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, the demiliterized zone in between North- and South-Korea, and the freeports and warehouses of Geneva.
More recently I changed my focus to spaces of production, like fruit farms in Borgloon and Hoogstraten (Belgium), an automobile factory in Valenciennes (North of France), C-mine, a former mining site in Genk (Belgium)...The writings of Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, Bruno Latour, David Graeber, Anna Tsing and Vinciane Despret are of a big influence for the work.

Why or what for?
With my artistic gestures I strive to a form of understanding or awareness, that can be both the beginning of knowledge and the result of it. It can encourage a public to gain knowledge about something, or it makes  knowledge tangible in a certain way.
The kind of knowledge I work with is not necessarily a knowledge that appeals to truth claims, but a knowledge that is embodied (sensory), situated (context-based) and imaginary: one that materialises other possibilities, new relations and underexposed perspectives.

Institutional support
At this moment I am elaborating a PhD in the arts titled “The art of habitation in places of production” at LUCA school of arts (Ghent), in the research group Art, Society and Education, and I am guided by Nancy Vansieleghem, who is an artist and philosopher of education. Within and besides this PhD, I persue different art projects in close collaboration with other artists and artist organisations.
My long term projects have been hosted by C-mine, Genk; Travail & Culture, Roubaix; Artsonje Art Centre, Seoul; Z33, centre for contemporary art, Hasselt; plan B, Kunsthal and Viernulvier, Ghent.
Resulting artworks have been shown in the various venues like the Flemish Architecture Institute in Antwerp; Red Cross Museum in Geneva; 019 Ghent; Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels; Live In Your Head Gallery in Geneva...
Articles about my works have been published in Oase journal, Metropolis M, De Witte Raaf, ... 
Projects have been funded by the Flemish Government, De Buren, Interreg Europe...
Books have been published by Onomatopee and Bitbook.

Formal biography

Ciel Grommen was trained in architecture at the Catholic University of Leuven (2012) and holds a master in contemporary art from the HEAD in Geneva (2015). She is currently a member of Jubilee, platform for artistic research in Brussels, and affiliated with LUCA school of arts in Ghent, where she is completing a doctoral research within the research group “Art, Society and Education”.

Often taking complex social contexts and disturbed landscapes as a starting point, Ciel engages in “research-by-habitation” and subsequently, with furniture, installations, events and stories, she tries to invent new narratives of cohabitation, always in close collaboration with others. Founding the collective “Seasonal Neighbours” in 2020, she researches contemporary agriculture in Europe and the position of the seasonal worker. In duo with Maximiliaan Royakkers, she engaged in the spatial transformation of the C-mine, a former coalmine in Genk, and with Maxime Brygo she built and activated “Météore, a machine-to-inhabit” in Stellantis factory in Valenciennes. Since 2024, together with Clémentine Vaultier and Maximiliaan Royakkers, she has been creating the "Atlas of Ovens”, an ongoing research project on containers of heat and rituals of baking.

Some of her works have been exhibited in C-mine Genk; Artsonje Art Centre in Seoul; the Red Cross Museum of Geneva; Z33, centre for contemporary art, in Hasselt; Vai in Antwerp; … Her works even more often appear in the ‘real’ world, such as Wetterse bakkery in Ghent, the parking lot of Aldi market Borgloon, at the foot of the terril of Winterslag, in the housing facility of a farm...