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Smooth as velvet - Textiles take over the walls at the Horta Museum

  • Exhibitions
The Horta Museum has invited five artists to dress the walls of the house ; their creations will be on display from 13 September 24 to 30 May 25. Following the successful Pushing Back the Walls exhibition held in 2022, it is now velvet’s turn to take centre stage as it decorates this famous home. L Carmona, F & P Fockedey, E Peroi and M Van Hoe were all given full creative freedom for this project

Fabric will be the key feature of this exhibition. This choice echoes Horta’s marked fondness for textiles, especially silk, which was hung in several of the houses he designed. This is also a profoundly architectural choice ; the great nineteenth-century theoretician saw textiles as the very source of all architecture, the matrix from which all ornamentation originates …

Here, velvet provides the central theme for this new venture. This textile is often used for furnishing, and was particularly favoured by Horta ; in this case, however, it is given a different mission, serving other purposes…
Boudoir > Élise Peroi
Family room > Marc Van Hoe
Breakfast room > Flore & Pauline Fockedey
Kitchen > Louisa Carmona

Other areas in the house, such as the smoking room, the bedroom and the dressing room, will also be decorated with velvet. In this way, visitors will be introduced to the creative worlds of the guest artists and artisans, through an evocative and informative display …

This selection was made by the Horta Museum’s Artistic Committee, comprising Marie Pok, Pascale Mussard, Caroline Mierop, Benjamin Zurstrassen and Francis Carpentier.