Artists in residence

Mattia Tosti (Rome, 1993) is an Italian-Brazilian curator and writer. His curatorial practice is often artist-led, resulting in projects that diverge rather than follow a single line of research. Nevertheless, a recurring thread in his work is his conception of the exhibition as a medium in its own right, leading him to develop research-based, site-responsive projects that favour interdisciplinary collaborations and hybrid formats.

His professional career includes experience in museums such as MAC São Paulo and MAAT in Lisbon, as well as in contemporary art galleries, notably as director of Monitor Lisbon (2020–2024). As an independent curator, he has designed exhibitions and screenings for institutional, commercial and unconventional contexts. His writings have been published in academic journals such as Routledge and De Gruyter, as well as in contemporary art magazines such as Flash Art International, Contemporânea and Umbigo. He has also written for various institutions, including CAM Gulbenkian, FRAC Bretagne and MNAC in Lisbon.

Cléo Totti (1989) is an artist based in Liège (BE). She works with a wide range of materials, mediums and techniques: with sculpture and performance. Her main motif is the human body, which is fragmented, distorted and transformed into pictorial objects. Alternating between fluid and solid, her work signals a fluidity and hybridity of both synthetic and natural bodies. She obtained her Master in Visual Arts at the ERG (School of Graphic Research), Brussels (2015). She has been nominated for the Friends of S.M.A.K. – Coming People (2016) and Prix de la Jeune Sculpture of the Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles (2020).

Her recent exhibitions include Phantoms & Emotional Ornaments, Les Brasseurs (2024), Liège (BE) ; Narcosis, Le Botanique (2024), Brussels (BE); De Bauxite, de carbone et de fer… A chemical Anthology, Avee Gallery, Kortrijk (BE); Stone/Image/Projection curated by Sam Steverlynck & Dom Wood, The Agprognostic Temple (2023), Chapelle de Boendael, Brussels (BE); Rooms of Resonance curated by Chantal Pattyn and Bénédicte Goessaert, Cloud Seven (2023) – Collection Frédéric de Goldschmidt, Brussels (BE); Art Week Rotterdam, Neck of the Woods, Rotterdam (NL); Allez, Allez!, Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (2022), Paris (FR); Fragile, El Gallery (2021), Welle (BE); Fearless, Market Gallery, Glasgow (2019); Mechanical Lyricism, BPS22, Charleroi; Elite 18, KRIEG, Hasselt; Resistance, CENTRALE d’art contemporain, Brussels (all 2018).

She has taken part in national and international residencies such as Centre culturel de l’Abbaye de Neimenster (2024), Luxembourg, (LU); Morpho (2020), Anvers, (BE); 2019: Ravi (2019), Liège (BE); Arscape with Stijn Maes (2016-2017), Siena (IT), Summer research residency (2015), Tinos (GR)…

Achraf Touloub explores the links between tradition and modernity in a globalized world. His pictorial work has led him to take an interest in various forms of drawing, with an alternative treatment of lines: a motif is then created from a multitude of juxtaposed lines. He is represented by the Baronian Xippas Gallery in Belgium, the PLAN B Gallery in Berlin and in Cluj, Romania.

For his residency under the “Art Explora & Cité internationale des arts” program, Achraf Touloub will develop a new series of drawings and paintings based on the question of our perception of reality in a world increasingly connected and governed by the omnipresence of communication technologies.

Since the beginning of his practice, the artist has never stopped thinking about the initiatory and immersive dimensions of technological tools, which even merge with traditional representation strategies. This immersive dimension today challenges our way of deciphering and grasping our era. Each event that punctuates it gives the impression of being staged, of being part of an already written scenario in which, all together, we find ourselves sucked in. This dizzying feeling of being both actor and spectator of the image that faces us is one of the great consequences of communication technologies on our minds. This vertigo that we face leads the artist to think and experiment with new registers of perception in an attempt to navigate within the multiple superimposed dimensions that make up our contemporary world.

Achraf Touloub articulates his project around pictorial research and immersive formats, conceiving representation primarily as a carnal and intuitive experience. The aim is to give the image a functionality, that of generating a space likely to reconnect us with our primordial dimension.