The Mindful Hand

The Mindful Hand is Belgian artist Eva L’Hoest’s first monographic exhibition in an institutional setting. The exhibition consists of a series of new works that question the ways in which analogue and digital image-making technologies influence our perception and our memory, modifying the notion of landscape and redrawing the boundaries between manual gesture and the mind.

Eva L’Hoest’s composite artworks mix together craftsmanship and digital techniques, the human gesture becoming an extension of the machine. A series of sculptures revisits the ancient techniques of lifecasting through the medium of 3D printing, while artificial intelligence and computer-generated images intrude on the film in a new audiovisual installation. The film is projected simultaneously across four walls, transporting us into empty domestic and institutional interiors, both real and artificial, as these morph through images taken from cinema.

Accompanied by the words of poet Eva Manusco, the exhibition The Mindful Hand questions the capacity for digital technologies to redefine language, the mechanisms of our desires, and the sometimes invisible tensions between human intention and the autonomy of machines.

Bio.

Eva L’Hoest is a Belgian artist who uses digital language as an archaeological tool to question notions of origin and memory. Combining sculpture, performance, and audiovisual installation, she explores how collective and individual mental images can be reactivated and reanimated in technological forms. She has shown her work in museums, art centers, and biennales, including KANAL – Centre Pompidou (Brussels, 2023), the Sydney Biennale (2021), WIELS (Brussels, 2021), the Riga International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2020), the Lyon Biennale (2019), and the Okayama Art Summit (2019). L’Hoest has been a resident at ISCP (New York, 2023), the Biennale College of Art (Venice, 2022), Meetfactory (Prague, 2015), and in 2023 she was awarded the Edward Steichen Prize. Her work was presented as a performance at IFFR 2020 and in a visual piece accompanying the Belgian Philharmonic Orchestra at BOZAR (Brussels, 2022). 

Photo: Kunstgiesserei St-Gallen