Though often overshadowed by Paris, London and Berlin, Brussels has for decades quietly nurtured an impressive ecosystem of galleries, artist-run spaces, and strong institutional programming at Wiels, Bozar, and the forthcoming Kanal Centre Pompidou (opening in 2026). Earlier this month, those spaces stepped into the spotlight thanks to the inaugural Brussels Art Week (5-8 September), which staked a claim for the city's distinct, contemporary voice amid a crowded art calendar.
Brussels Art Week brought together gallery openings, artist talks, institutional shows, performances, and offsite interventions across multiple neighbourhoods in the city, all co-ordinated under a new, non-profit organisation, RendezVous. The co-founders of RendezVous, Evelyn Simons and Laure Decock, say the aim was never to replicate the fair model but to reframe Brussels as a destination. “The classic fair model has proven, for many, not to be working as well anymore,” they explain. “Our aim was always to transform it from a gallery weekend into an art week. To collaborate, and to build a bridge between the commercial, the artist-run, and the institutional.”
Instead, the focus was on a highly curated, stylised approach, complete with its own distinctive branding and merchandise: an elegant swan logo, diamanté studded T-shirts (with sale profits donated to Gaza Soup Kitchen), and cigarette lighters engraved with the question “Can I show you my portfolio?” The founders describe this as a deliberate attempt to create a format tailored both to Brussels and to the shifting demands of today’s art market. “Brussels, or Belgium in general, has a big collector base and a long history of that. It’s very international. So many people pass through here,” they explained. Yet the question remains: can this decentralised, curated art week format generate significant market impact?
At the heart of Brussels Art Week was a newly commissioned social space by the British artist Zoe Williams, titled A Tip Inn. A fully functioning bar and performance venue, it became the week’s social hub. Hosting talks, readings, and screenings by day, and transforming into a bar with DJ sets, the space was crowded throughout the week. “Zoe researches bar culture, notions of the bacchanal, the banquet, and excess. It's very Brussels, and very in line with the city’s ‘brutal’ culture,” the organisers said, their aim was to subvert ways in which people in the art world connect and form their networks. Williams filled the space with theatrical curtains, café tables, and free-hanging sculptural props, including pistolets (the local bread roll) and sausages.
A sound installation by collaborators Katie Shannon and Keira Fox (part of TLC23 collective), played a looped bar ambience, clinking coins, and even sounds of a toilet flushing, underscoring themes of money, exchange, and excess. “I’m interested in taste, class, luxury, even delusions of grandeur, and how they’re played out through materials,” Williams said. “It’s about hospitality’s tension: intoxication, pleasure, commerce, all wrapped together. It’s quite kitsch and camp, but it’s also about power dynamics: how desire and judgment sit together.”
Visitors to Julien Creuzet's exhibition at Mendes Wood DM
Courtesy of Brussels Art Week
Across the city, galleries presented a mix of contemporary artists, from Charline von Heyl’s bold abstract paintings at Xavier Hufkens, to Gladstone showing Nicholas Bierk’s highly-detailed, emotive figurative paintings. Mendes Wood DM exhibited Julien Creuzet’s colourful and hypnotic explorations of identity and diaspora.
For many participating galleries, Brussels Art Week offered both opportunity and risk. Damien & The Love Guru, known for cross-disciplinary programming, moved part of its presentation offsite, installed Sharon Van Overmeire’s monumental inflatable castle sculpture, The Farewell Hotel, in the Wiels garden. “Shown outdoors and within an external institution, the bouncy castle naturally brought in people outside our ‘usual audience.’” the gallery's co-founder Priya Shetty, explains. “Which was exactly the point: to invite people of all ages to experience art in a more playful way, and in a less conventional setting; tapping into that greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts quality. It extends the conversation and makes engagement more inclusive and worthwhile.”
Brussels’s understated reputation was frequently cited by gallery participants as a strength rather than a limitation. “Brussels has a surprisingly balanced ecology,” a spokesperson for Damien & The Love Guru notes. “It supports both the institutional weight of established galleries and the rowdier experiments of smaller ones. Unlike Paris or New York, where high rents and polished infrastructures can put pressure on the scene, Brussels can thrive on its local ways of doing things. And that can open space for artists and galleries to experiment without being as flattened by market expectations as elsewhere.”
Piero Bisello, co-founder of Gauli Zitter, another internationally active gallery, agrees: “The culture of art celebrities is less strong here than in other European cities. Maybe a place for discovery more than others [...] we did feel more international people have been to our gallery this week. Locals are also hungrier for art when they're back from summer, regardless of Art Week.”
Bisello also highlighted the city’s other advantages: “There is no competition with cities that are five to ten times larger. What Brussels can still offer is more affordable square footage to artists and art spaces, hopefully attracting them to town with better working conditions. A less clear local identity in Brussels as opposed to very self-confident European cities is also a plus.”
One key element of Brussels Art Week is its partnership with Eurostar, designed to connect the city more directly with London, Paris, and other European capitals. For Irene Laub Gallery, active since 2016, the week is an exciting format: “Brussels Art Week is a new way of organising things, it's dynamic and another way of discovering contemporary art in the city.”
As its first edition demonstrates, Brussels Art Week offers something entirely different from other European art capitals. Each night, The Tip Inn is filled with people mingling, dancing, connecting, and here, that connection feels organic. As Damien & The Love Guru noted: “One could question if Brussels even should try to ‘compete’ with cities like Paris or Berlin because it risks losing what makes Brussels special: its unpredictable side.” That very unpredictability is its strength. Brussels Art Week’s focus is on the city as a place of artistic discovery, and perhaps more importantly, it suggests a model the art market can learn from: one that is lower risk for participating galleries, less intimidating for new collectors, and entirely distinct from the fair-driven circuit. In a shifting art market hungry for alternatives, Brussels Art Week offers an example of how discovery, rather than competition, might lead the way forward.
