Exhibition – The Garden of Utopias by Françoise Schein, in collaboration with the Strombeek Cultural Center
Exhibition from June 5 to August 28, 2026 – Opening on June 5, 2026
The Belgian artist Françoise Schein is developing, in collaboration with residents of the Strombeek neighbourhood, The Garden of Utopias, a long table installed within the newly pedestrianised public space. Over the summer months, the forecourt of the cultural centre becomes a site for encounter and exchange, where residents, passers-by and visitors gather around an artwork that articulates both reflection and participation.
The inauguration will take place on 5 June, coinciding with the opening of (H)eden, the biennial retrospective exhibition of the cultural centre’s visual arts workshops. In August, the project will form a central element of Strombeach, an նախաձեռն initiative by Viva1853 that annually reconfigures the town square as a temporary beach activated through activities developed with and for local residents.
The Garden of Utopias extends Schein’s longstanding investigation into the capacity of art to generate forms of social connection and to inscribe public space as a site of memory, attention and care. Her practice operates through the translation of utopia into situated, collective processes, akin to a garden cultivated over time. The table is realised with the participation of around twenty local residents. Through a series of workshops with the artist, coloured ceramic tiles are conceived, painted and fired, forming the surface of the table. These individual contributions are assembled into a collective composition, a shared narrative shaped by multiple voices and gestures.
In this context, the work reconfigures the square as a shared environment — a relational field in which art functions as a medium for ongoing dialogue between the cultural centre, the neighbourhood and its inhabitants. Utopia is approached here not as an abstract or idealised construct, but as a process grounded in collective engagement. Divergent perspectives, as well as individual and shared experiences, actively contribute to the construction of this common space.
The communal table may be understood as a horizontal garden, both symbolic and material. Each tile operates as a unit within a broader landscape, suggesting a mode of coexistence attentive to plurality and interdependence. The work thus situates public space as a living structure, subject to transformation and continuity. Utopia, in this sense, emerges through processes of making, sharing and collective authorship.
