Presented at Museum PARCUM in the historic Park Abbey in Leuven, Belgium, Threading Landscapes: Art at Park Abbey brings together 24 international contemporary artists to explore the relationships between landscape, cultural memory, ecology, spirituality and collective life.
Curated by Katya García-Antón, María Inés Rodríguez, Daniel Feldman and Ana Sokoloff, the exhibition marks the completion of a fifteen-year restoration of Park Abbey, one of the best-preserved monastic complexes in Western Europe. Founded in 1129, the abbey encompasses historic buildings, gardens, ponds, meadows and woodland, providing a setting in which contemporary artistic practices enter into dialogue with nearly nine centuries of architectural, religious and environmental history.
The exhibition takes inspiration from three principles associated with the Norbertine tradition: Localitas (place), Contemplatio (reflection) and Actio (action). These ideas provide a framework for examining how people relate to their surroundings and how landscapes are shaped by human activity, ecological processes, historical narratives and systems of knowledge.
Rather than approaching landscape solely as a natural environment, Threading Landscapes considers it as a complex network of physical, social, spiritual and technological relationships. The exhibition includes sculpture, textiles, moving image, sound, performance and site-specific installations. Nine artists have developed new projects responding directly to the abbey's architecture, biodiversity, archives and history.
Among the participating artists are Leonor Antunes, Edith Dekyndt, Cecilia Vicuña, Hana Miletić, Laure Prouvost, Meg Webster, Carlos Casas and Eunjo Lee. Their diverse practices address questions of ecological transformation, the transmission of knowledge, migration, labour, memory and care.
