We are delighted to announce the 11th edition of Contour Biennale, curated by Sofia Lemos. In this relaunch edition, a selection of moving-image installations by Belgian and international artists will unfold across distinctive venues in Mechelen.

Opening: The biennale will open with a festive launch weekend on 5–6 September, featuring a series of events and guided tours across participating venues.

Join us on Saturday, 5 September for an opening drink at 6pm at Kunsthal Mechelen.

Preview day for press and partners: 3 September 2026. Please contact us at [email protected] to request for press accreditation.

Follow us at @contourbiennale and subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates on the participating artists and venues, the public program, and ways to get involved.

CURATOR

 

 

Sofia Lemos is a curator and writer whose work engages the intersections of art, performance, and discourse, with a sustained focus on ecology and critical practice. 

From 2021 to 2024, Lemos was Curator at TBA21—Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, where she launched a programme centred on ecological and community-based practices, commissioning new work and convenings artists, performers, and thinkers. Between 2018 and 2021, she served as Curator of Public Programmes and Research at Nottingham Contemporary, where she developed live and collaborative projects, including the multi-year Sonic Continuum, exploring the sonic and its relationship to social change. 

Lemos was associate curator of the 2nd Riga Biennial (2020), a visiting curator at Galeria Municipal do Porto (2017–18), and collaborated on the public program of Contour Biennale 8 (2017). She has curated exhibitions and programmes with multiple international institutions, including Culturgest, Galerias Municipais de Lisboa, Serralves Museum, Frac Sud, Kunstinstituut Melly, MACBA, MAMBA, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, among others.

She edited Reluctant Gardener (Bom Dia Books, 2025), Meandering: Art, Ecology, and Metaphysics (Sternberg Press, 2024), Sonic Continuum (Nottingham Contemporary, 2021), and Metabolic Rifts (Anagram, 2019, with Alexandra Balona). Lemos lectures regularly and contributes to international publications, including e-flux criticism, Frieze, Mousse, and Spike.

CONCEPT

Titled The Eyes of the Heart and the Soul of the World, Contour Biennale 11 is dedicated to the “imaginal”: a space of potentiality where subtle perception and lived experiences come together in images that reveal rather than represent, reconciling internal and outer realities.

This edition will bring together practices that focus on visions, dreams, and projections that arise during life’s transformations—from gestation and birth to childhood and adolescence, from gender transition and ageing to love and loss, from climate crisis and exile to regeneration and return—as images that both move us and mobilise change.

ARTISTS

Ayoung Kim
b. 1979, Busan, South Korea. Lives and works in Seoul, South Korea.

Gabriel Abrantes
b.1984, North Carolina, USA. Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.

Laure Prouvost
b. 1978, Lille, France. Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.

Lisa Spilliaert
b. 1990, Tokyo, Japan. Lives and works in Ghent, Belgium.

Mariana Caló & Francisco Queimadela
b. 1984, Viana do Castelo, Portugal / b. 1985, Coimbra, Portugal. Live and work in Porto, Portugal.

Rodrigo Hernández
b.1983, Mexico City, Mexico.Lives and works in Paris, France and Mexico City, Mexico.

Yuyan Wang
b. 1989, Qingdao, China. Lives and works in Paris, France.

More artists will be announced soon.

VENUES

Kunsthal Mechelen / De Garage
Main venue
Onder-Den-Toren 12, 2800 Mechelen

De Noker (vzw Emmaüs)
Nokerstraat 4, 2800 Mechelen

dmvA architecten
Sint-Katelijnestraat 16, 2800 Mechelen

TACK TICK
Huidevettersstraat 3, 2800 Mechelen

Silent Garden at the Archiepiscopal Palace
Schoutestraat, 2800 Mechelen

PARTNERS

We are building a sustainable future for Contour Biennale, a project that is currently growing thanks to the energy of artists, visitors, partners, volunteers and people from Mechelen.

The 11th edition is supported by Flanders State of the Arts and is only possible thanks to our partners City of Mechelen, Kunsthal Mechelen, Kunstencentrum nona, TACK TICK, Academie Mechelen, NW Aalst, Argos, Beursschouwburg, Kunstenpunt, KASK & Conservatorium, escautville, STUK, WIELS, Auguste Orts, Courtisane, dmvA architecten, Emmaüs vzw, Studio PARA, Studio RGB, and Bureau BoschBerg.