An invitation from Mildred (ongoing)

An Invitation from Mildred is a weekend collective in which seven artists come together at Mildred's table — a fictional hostess whose name literally means 'gentle strength'.

Mildred invites her guests for a dinner in an empty apartment. Each artist brings a work they want to discuss that evening. The bare space becomes a place for encounter and artistic reflection.

Mildred's role is distinctly performative. She is not a curator — she is a hostess. She tends to the comfort of her guests and the flow of conversation, but never takes a position herself. Her presence is a continuous gesture of care: generous, attentive and quietly withdrawn.

On Sunday, the artists invite friends and show what the weekend has brought forth — not as finished work, but as the trace of a conversation.

An Invitation from Mildred rests on three pillars: care, encounter and unlearning.

Annie & Archie, Architects is a game box — assembled from stones collected in the surroundings of the University Hospital in Ghent, and two gloves.

The box travels from exhibition to exhibition. Visitors are invited to open it, pick up the stones, put on the gloves and build. There are no instructions, no right outcome. The stones are small and unspectacular — gathered from the pavements of the hospital — yet in the hands of a visitor they become material for architecture, for play, for thought.

The work is distinctly performative. Annie and Archie are not present, but their role is — that of the architect who designs a situation rather than a result. By composing the box and stepping back, they hand authorship to whoever arrives. Each visitor becomes a builder, each encounter a temporary construction. The gloves are both practical and ceremonial: an invitation to handle, to take the work seriously, to play.

Annie & Archie, Architects is at once a sculptural object, a social proposition and a quiet archive of encounters.