Announcement YOUNG CURATORS PROGRAMME (YCP) - Belgian Pavilion

We are happy to share that curatorial students Camille Van Meenen, Hugo Roger, and Paula Swinnen have been selected for the Young Curators Programme. They will be working with the Petticoat Government collective (Denicolai & Provoost, Antoinette Jattiot, Speculoos, and Nord) and have joined the team in researching, producing, and monitoring this year's Belgian Pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

The YCP is a grant programme designed to provide opportunities for emerging curators based in Belgium and working in Flanders and the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Recipients benefit from a one-month stay in Venice, during which they develop research activities while gaining experience through active participation in the life of the Belgian Pavilion at the International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia.

For its third edition, the YCP has selected eight emerging curators who have been working with the Petticoat Government collective (Denicolai&Provoost, Antoinette Jattiot, Spec uloos and Nord) since autumn 2023. Four bilingual duos have joined team members in researching, producing and monitoring the exhibition. They are engaged in a process of research into the histories of the folk giants at the heart of the project and the contexts and issues associated not only with the themes linked to these characters, but also with collective working methods, the role of the artist in the city and the part played by the vernacular in these practices. As part of their research, participants also contribute to some of the texts that will be found in the various
media associated with the project, including social media, the project website and the catalog produced for the exhibition. In Venice, the role of the young curators focuses on the oral aspects of folk tradition and popular culture that find expression in storytelling. By developing their mediation tools to tell and transmit the content of their research once in the pavilion, they gain experience as active members of the Belgian pavilion team.

The fellowship programme was born of the ambition to engage the Belgian art scene in the broadest sense.
In 2021, Laila Melchior and Laura Herman (course director Curatorial Studies, KASK & Conservatorium) initiated the second edition of YCP in collaboration with Hilde Teerlinck, curator of the Belgian pavilion, Daphné de Hemptinne and Aurélie Gravelat (ArBA-EsA) with the support of the Flemish and French-speaking communities and the BIJ.
In 2023, Laila Melchior in collaboration with the Petticoat Government collective (Denicolai & Proovost, Antoinette Jattiot, Nord, Spec uloos), Daphné de Hemptinne and Aurélie Gravelat (ArBA-EsA - Académie royale des Beaux-Arts), Laura Herman and Isabel Van Bos (Curatorial Studies at KASK & Conservatorium), are working on the 3rd iteration of the programme with the support of the French-speaking and Flemish communities and the BIJ