Works by 11 Innovative Belgian Textile Designers Are on View in New York

This year’s New York Textile Month, in collaboration with the organization Belgium Is Design, will present “Textiles Revealed,” an exhibition that runs from September 26 to October 3. Curated by Lidewij Edelkoort—the influential trend forecaster who founded NYTM in 2016—and Philip Fimmano, the exhibition highlights the innovative work of 11 contemporary Belgian textile designers. Edelkoort, who is also dean of hybrid studies at the New School, notes that many of them are also entrepreneurs who are equally comfortable working with the textile industry or doing their own more conceptual projects. “There’s an incredible density to all the work,” she adds.

Below, discover the highlights on view.

Alice Leens, Untitled, 2015. Photo: Courtesy of Belgium is Design

Alice Leens’s Corolle, a subtly topographic work made of 100 percent cotton, exemplifies her idea that the thread is the essence of textiles. The goal of her work is to allow, she has said, “the spectator to let himself be touched . . . by the beauty of a banal object that he no longer sees.”

BedrossianServaes, A Traverser, 2016. Photo: Courtesy of Belgium is Design

Bedrossian Servaes’s Ani Bedrossian, a textile designer, and Flavien Servaes, a product designer, are known for their experimental, research-driven textiles. Their work has complex structures and color rhythms, like the ones shown from the series “À Traverser.” Some parts of the textile are more loosely woven and cut with scissors to create fringed panels.

Lady II 5 (2019) from DeCluuz by Luc Druez. Photo: Courtesy of Belgium is Design

Luc Druez is a textile research consultant known for blending natural and technical fibers. In addition to designing for his company, LcD Textile Edition, Druez has now created DeCluuz, a series of seven large-scale tapestry portraits of women that combine technical fibers and metallic filaments. Lady II 5, made of synthetic horsehair, silver, and copper, challenges our preconceptions of tradition, materials, and weaving itself.

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Tapa daybed (2015) by Chevalier Masson and Erwin De Muer. Photo: Yvan_Guerdon

Eric Chevalier and Anne Masson of Chevalier Masson, known for their radical approach to textile design, joined with the designer Diane Steverlynck to found Laend in 2014. It produces rugs, blankets, and the Tapa bench and daybed, with Chevalier Masson’s layered, vibrantly colored textile, made of felted waste fibers on a steel frame designed by Erwin de Muer.

Krjst Studio’s Awe on fire, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of Belgium is Design

Erika Schillebeeckx and Justine de Moriamé, founders of KJRST Studio in Brussels, create tapestries that use both traditional weaving techniques and new technology, and draw from traditional and contemporary art. On their website, the two describe their tapestries—like Awe on Fire, which is made of mohair, paper, cotton, and various synthetic fibers—as “dreamscapes” that reflect “an emotional mapping in response to the world we live in.”

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Christoph Hefti’s Swiss Mask (2019). Photo: Jeroen Verrecht

Christoph Hefti, a Swiss designer and artist who has created textiles for the fashion world, founded the Brussels gallery Maniera in 2014. It commissions architects and artists to design furniture, objects, and textiles, including the limited-edition rugs Hefti himself designs, like Swiss Mask, which are hand-knotted in Nepal and explore the spiritual tradition of storytelling through textiles.

Genevieve Levivier, Eggshell Moon Shadow, 2019. Photo: Genevieve Levivier

Genevieve Levivier, the founder of A+Z Design Studio, spent a decade designing innovative textiles for fashion houses like Christian Dior and Balenciaga. Now Levivier is creating contemporary tapestries, like Eggshell Moon Shadow, that are made of sustainable materials like eggshell, flowers, biofibers, and pigments, which she employs to “play with light like stained glass,” she says.

“Textiles Revealed” is on view at Unix Gallery at 513 West 26th Street in New York from September 26 through October 3.