Currently

On view

7 October – 22 November 2026

  1. 01 Embodied Practices Inaugural exhibition · Yasmin Van 'tveld
  2. 02 Art Contest 22e édition · Valerie Boucher
  3. 03 Prix Carré sur Seine 2025 laureates · From Paris to Brussels

01 — Inaugural exhibition

Embodied Practices

7 October – 13 December 2026

Curator: Yasmin Van 'tveld

Free admission

  • Raf Thienpont
  • Justine Taillard
  • Maaike Leyn
  • Marina Gasparini
  • Felicien Umbreit
  • Besnike Saraishta
  • muesli collective
  • Agathe Egret
  • Lucien Lyon
  • Juliette Kovacs
  • Johan Dussart
  • Juana F. Bustamante
  • Léa Belooussovitch
  • Nina Anduiza

Embodied Practices, the inaugural exhibition of Atoma Art Center, is drawing on the relation between the body and the object in the sense that the body serves as a site of knowledge, and, consequently, the object can both retain and become a body in itself. We are looking at what it means when technique, repetition, touch, and gesture become ways of thinking: shapes and material concepts that give form to impressions, stories, and meaning.

Furthermore, Embodied Practices explores how the body initiates change in matter while simultaneously being moved by it. The body can carry pain, illness, and nostalgia, while material becomes connected to loss, identity, language, and perception. A painting can present memories without depicting any, a landscape can become the vehicle for an inner experience, a sculpture can retain the trace of a movement long after the hand has left it. Art then becomes an object that preserves time in substance, like a vessel of what is left of us. The energy of a person becomes a line, as a corporeal, partly unconscious process is translated directly onto paper. Sculptures invite touch and play, allowing people to engage with the spirit of the work through its moving parts.

But what remains of the body when it is no longer visible? What if any clear reference to the gesture is more than veiled, if the body is omitted or the background takes centre stage? Has the body then truly disappeared from the process, or does the inescapability of the embodiment of our thoughts mean that they are still present and felt through the art?

Embodied Practices is, ultimately, an exhibition about gesture, matter, memory, and thought. It inhabits an intermediate space: between the visible and the invisible, between gesture and its trace, between know-how and thought, between the body that creates and the object that endures.

02 — 22e édition

Art Contest

7 October – 22 November 2026

Curator: Valerie Boucher

Botanique off-site programme

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  • Badi Rezzak
  • Eva Maria Bouillon
  • Felix De Clercq
  • Kayin Luys
  • Lennert Lefever
  • Louiz Castiella
  • Camille Amandine Marino
  • Sem Roels
  • Sebastian Vielma Fleischhacker
  • Noé Znidarsic

ArtContest, which is preparing for its 22nd edition, has selected the ten artists whose work will be exhibited this year, from 7 October to 22 November, as part of Botanique’s off-site programme at Atoma Art Center. From among these ten artists, the jury will select four prize winners.

The annual contemporary art competition ArtContest aims to discover, support and accompany the work of young contemporary artists over the long term. Its philosophy is to contribute to their artistic development and to encourage reflection on their practices and positions as artists within contemporary society. With ever-increasing ambition, the non-profit organisation strives to provide participants with maximum visibility—through exhibitions, its website, social media, art publications and other initiatives—as well as opportunities to meet and engage with professionals from the art world.

We are particularly pleased to continue our partnership with Botanique, which is once again hosting us this year as part of its artistic programme, within Atoma Art Center, a new partner venue for this edition.

This collaboration reflects our commitment to expanding opportunities and spaces for the artists we support to present their work and engage with audiences and professionals.

At a time when cultural institutions are undergoing profound transformations and facing a political climate that can sometimes weaken the conditions necessary for artistic creation and dissemination, solidarity and cooperation between institutions are more essential than ever. The partnership between ArtContest, the Prix Carré sur Seine and the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris reflects this shared commitment to bringing together energies, supporting emerging artistic creation and encouraging the circulation of artists across borders.

In April 2026, Carré sur Seine welcomed three ArtContest artists to Paris—Helen Anna Flanagan, Shervin/e Sheikh Rezaei and Ugo Woatzi—as part of the exhibition Indices de présence at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris.

This collaboration continues in a spirit of reciprocity: Lina Filipovich, Pablo Hnatow and Yosra Mojtahedi, artists from the Prix Carré sur Seine 2025, will be invited to present their work as part of the ArtContest 2026 exhibition in Brussels.

More than a simple partnership, this exchange affirms the importance of maintaining spaces for dialogue, visibility and support for artists, strengthening connections between cultural actors and establishing cooperation as a genuine driving force for contemporary artistic creation.

This year also marks the arrival of a new member of the jury: Barbara Cuglietta, Director of the Jewish Museum of Belgium, whom we are delighted to welcome alongside Catherine Mayeur (Professor of Art History and critic), Liliane De Wachter (curator), Simon Delobel (curator and art historian) and Bas Hendrikx (curator at KANAL – Centre Pompidou).

We warmly thank them all for their commitment and their discerning perspectives.

The invited laureates are presented in Prix Carré sur Seine.

03 — 2025 laureates

Prix Carré sur Seine

7 October – 22 November 2026

From Paris to Brussels: an artistic exchange

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  • Lina Filipovich
  • Pablo Hnatow
  • Yosra Mojtahedi

As part of the partnership between ArtContest, Prix Carré sur Seine and the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris, three artists from the Prix Carré sur Seine 2025 — Lina Filipovich, Pablo Hnatow and Yosra Mojtahedi — are invited to present their work in Brussels.

This exhibition follows an initial exchange held in April 2026 at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris, where three ArtContest artists — Helen Anna Flanagan, Shervin/e Sheikh Rezaei and Ugo Woatzi — presented their work as part of the exhibition Indices de présence.

In Brussels, this collaboration continues in a spirit of reciprocity. It reflects a shared commitment to creating new opportunities for artists to gain visibility, encouraging their circulation across borders and strengthening connections between the Belgian and French art scenes.

The Atoma Art Center is a contemporary art centre in Brussels, founded in 2024 to promote the creation and diffusion of contemporary art, and to connect the Belgian art scene with its international counterparts.

As a hybrid art facility, the center brings together under one single roof activities ordinarily found in separate venues, allowing to explore new types of interactions amongst the traditional roles of creation, representation, diffusion, interpretation, and assimilation of art within the contemporary culture.

At the core of our vision lies a desire to act as a fertile conversation platform between artists of all disciplines, critics, curators, scholars, art institutions, advisors, gallerists and collectors, as well as to serve as a facilitator for the wider artistic community,

making our venue available for independent and cross-disciplinary projects carried in collaboration with inspired individuals, private organisations or public institutions from Belgium and abroad.

Through this initiative, after three years of meticulous renovation works, we are happy to breathe new life into the former factory of the cherished Atoma notebooks, a beautifully light-filled 4500 sqm industrial facility located near the Wiels in Brussels, which has been a part of the neighbourhood’s history since its construction in the mid nineteen twenties.

Gilles Dehareng and Nina Anduiza
Founders of the Atoma Art Center