Ekphrasis
From 24 October 2019 to 9 February 2020
Image and text are very close, complementary, and even interchangeable. Throughout time, numerous artists have experimented with the fine line which separates the two. Ekphrasis – Writing in Art presents works and texts by more than forty visual artists who experimented with writing as a means of replacing or describing an image.
Abandoned dwellings of Beirut
From 14 november to 5 january 2020
For 150 years, Beirut has experienced successive periods of unbridled growth, war, economic and social crisis and migratory flows. Art historian and visual artist Gregory Buchakjian reveals these abandoned dwellings and the lives of the former inhabitants with hundreds of official documents, photographs, and other personal effects.
Flamboyant
From 28 March to 6 October 2019
Curated by Louma Salamé, Flamboyant is an immersive exhibition, inviting visitors into the home of a fictional collector from the 1920s and 1930s.
Decoratieve platen
From 19 september to 6 october 2019
Jolien De Roo is the first laureate and prize winner of ArtContest 2018, supported by the Boghossian Foundation. She shows recent works at her solo exhibition in the Project Space of the Villa Empain.
Heliopolis
From 28 March to 18 August 2019
The Boghossian Foundation highlights Heliopolis, the birthplace of a new city built entirely from scratch by the Belgian industrialist Edouard Empain at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Beyond Borders
From 6 September 2018 to 24 February 2019.
Since Ancient history, borders have raised questions related to themes of internal and external, identity and belonging. The Foundation has been exploring this theme in collaboration with the EIB.
Of links and exiles
From 15 November 2018 to 3 February 2019
Of links and exiles is a residency and exhibition project which invites seven artists from Morocco to reflect and experiment on the meaning of making or breaking bonds in our contemporary societies.
Melancholia
From 15 March to 19 August 2018
The exhibition explores issues such as nostalgia for ancient forms and a bygone era; for the depiction of solitude, ruins, and passing time.
Ways of Seeing
From 22 Septembre 2017 to 18 February 2018
Taking its cue from John Berger’s 1972 seminal text on visual culture, Ways of Seeing explores the various formalistic strategies that artists employ to re-configure our perception of the world. Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, the exhibition invites the viewer to investigate the manifold ways by which artists accord forms and concepts that are otherwise familiar with renewed appearances and meanings.
Instantanés d’Orient
From 7 December 2017 to 11 February 2018
The Boghossian Foundation presents Instantanés d’Orient, a selection of photographs from the Biennal of contemporary photographers from the Arab world shown in Paris at the Arab world institute as well as at the European house of photography in 2017.
SITUATION
From 8 to 26 November 2017
Artist Vasilis Zarifopoulos presents SITUATION in the frame of his residency at the Boghossian Foundation. The project is an attempt to synthesize the works and diverse field of ideas that emerge from the residency of artists, choreographers, writers, musicians at the Foundation.
Mondialité
From 19 April to 10 September 2017
Mondialité focuses on the work of writer, poet and philosopher Edouard Glissant and his inspiring call for a global dialogue that does not erase local cultures.
Chun Kwang Young
From 18 May to 10 September 2017
The artist Chun Kwang Young is the subject of the first solo presentation to date at the Boghossian Foundation. In congruence with the foundation’s focus on art and dialogue between cultures, Chun’s work emerges from a complex group of forms and influences, even as it achieves an elemental unity.
The City of Brussels inaugurated an exhibition consisting of four sculptures in its pedestrian zone. This initiative by Karine Lalieux, Alderwoman for Culture, was made possible thanks to a close collaboration with the Boghossian Foundation. The exhibition is on display until the 4th of September.
Imaginary Frontiers
From 24 February to 30 April 2017
Imaginary Frontiers is a exhibition devoted to the theme of borders, visible and invisible and to mental mapping.
Decor
From 8 September 2016 to 2 April 2017
The exhibition Decor, co-curated by Tino Sehgal, Dorothea von Hantelmann and Asad Raza will be an exhibition about the decorative in modern and contemporary art and at the same time simply be a decoration of the Villa Empain. With works of , Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, Pierre Huyghe, Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol, just to name a few.
Seeing Zen
10 November 2016 – 29 January 2017
The Boghossian Foundation presents ‘Seeing Zen’, an exhibition of 60 Zenga masterpieces from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. Zenga means, ‘Seeing Zen through the vehicle of painting.’ Zenga bear witness to Zen ideals and challenge the viewer to look deeply into the meaning of the painting – and by extension look deeply into oneself.
Répétition
13 May 2016 – 21 August 2016
The exhibition Répétition, co-curated by Asad Raza and Nicola Lees, includes historic graphic art works arranged in a mise-en-scene of new commissions by international artists such as Abbas Akhavan, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Latifa Echakhch, Lydia Ourahmane, Dexter Sinister and Mariana Telleria. In addition, the choreographer Andros Zins-Browne will present Already Unmade, the parallel project he conceived specially for the Villa Empain.
When process becomes form: Dansaekhwa and Korean abstraction
20 February 2016– 24 April 2016
Working at the crossroads of diverse stylistic negotiations and within a politically and socially charged context, the seven featured Korean artists in this exhibition Lee Ufan, Chung Chang-Sup, Park Seo-Bo, Kwon Young-Woo, Ha Chong-Hyun, Kim Whanki and Chung Sang-Hwa, employed abstraction as a means of synthesis and innovation.
Sarkis with Parajanov
24 September 2015– 31 January 2016
In the context of the 2015 commemorations of the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, the Boghossian Foundation presents an exhibition of two major artists of the Armenian contemporary culture.
Heaven and Hell. From magic carpets to drones
6 March – 6 September 2015
The magic carpet has long been a symbolic way of travelling around the world. In Persian mythology, King Solomon had a magic carpet. The Queen of Sheba, who was said to be a magician, allegedly offered him this fabulous gift.
Music Palace, the power of music seen by visual artists
25 September 2014 – 08 Februari 2015
Music Palace, as a call for freedom that awakens all the promises of the music in the sumptuous setting of the Villa Empain !
A book between two stools
01 March 2014 – 07 September 2014
For two millennia the book has been expressing a set of world values and representations. In the 1st century CE, the appearance of the codex marked nothing less than a revolution in Rome, as it made the use of the scroll gradually obsolete.
The Blue Route
27 September 2013 – 09 February 2014
This exhibition follows the footsteps of the Silk Road through the colour blue, for centuries inspiring artists, craftsmen and poets, both in the East and West alike.
Exhibition Turbulences II
28 February 2013 – 01 September 2013
Unlike other so called “stable or balanced” matters, the turbulent processes are extremely touching, irreversible and unpredictable.
Exhibitions 2012 - 2013
Edouard and Cleopatra. Egyptomanias from the XIXth century
20 September 2012 – 10 February 2013
For many years, the Boghossian Foundation has kept its goal to contribute as much as possible to the dialog between western and eastern cultures.
Exhibition Art is the answer ! Contemporary Lebanese artists and designers
29 March 2012 – 02 September 2012
After humanitarian and educational activities since 1998 in Armenia and Lebanon, the Boghossian Foundation has also set itself the objective to contribute, as concretely as possible, to the dialogue between the cultures of the East and the West.
Exhibitions 2010 - 2011
A dream of eternity. The long road of Oriental arts
07 October 2011 – 26 February 2012
Time is usually considered from two opposite angels: the instant and the duration. However, there is a third dimension of time, registered in the theory of dynamic systems, defended by mathematician Henri Poincaré: that of a long time, potentially never-ending.
Women’s modesty and anger
11 March 2011 – 25 September 2011
Rituals, wigs, scarfs, make-up and so many other constraints determined the life of women for centuries, between mutilation, dissimulation and unveiling.
Colors of the Orient, Arts and lifestyles in the Ottoman Empire
18 November 2010 – 27 February 2011
From the 18th of November 2010 until the 27th of February 2011, the Boghossian Foundation will present, in the salons and on the several levels of the Villa Empain, an exhibition which underlines the richness of the cultural inheritance transmitted by the Ottoman Empire, since the XVth Century until the beginning of the XIXth Century.
Path of the elegance between the East and the West
23 April 2010 – 31 October 2010
The elegance declines here as the lead. If this theme is inspired by the beauty of the very house, it is advisable to assert in a more general way that the elegance constitutes a precious inheritance, a way of belonging to the world and to the others, the grace and the delicacy in the expression, in the gestures, in the recognized quality of the things which surround us.