Ian Waelder | Artistic Residency at WIELS 2024

Ian Waelder (Madrid, 1993) is the artist selected for this residency, which aims to participate in the prestigious international residency program of the WIELS Contemporary Art Center (Brussels), between July and December 2024, with the collaboration of Acción Cultural Spanish and the Department of Culture of the Spanish Embassy in Belgium. The purpose of this call is to facilitate the creation of collaboration networks, to promote the mobility of Spanish creators, to encourage artistic production by offering residencies for artists and the provision of work spaces, as well as to strengthen links with institutions international cultural.

Ian Waelder explores memory and trace by isolating archived stories and languages in relation to his biography, working through the poetics of accident and the reuse of what is discarded. His works share a sense of porosity, which becomes a metaphor for the presence of multiple openings within a form. By choosing everyday materials such as newspapers, found objects, paper mache or cardboard, Waelder gives form to what has not been archived, photographed, recorded or written down, reflecting on the conditions and politics of the construction of memory. His work spans a wide range of media, from photography and sculpture to sound and installation.

Waelder studied Fine Arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main with Prof. Haegue Yang and Prof. Peter Fischli, and was part of Prof. Mark von Schlegell's Pure Fiction seminar. His works have been shown individually and in group exhibitions in galleries and institutions such as carlier | gebauer (Berlin, 2024), Neuer Kunstverein (Giessen, 2024), Fundació Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona, 2023), Super Super Markt (Berlin, 2023), Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani (Palma, 2023), Fundación Delfina (London ), 2023), Galerie Rolando Anselmi (Rome, 2023), Kunstverein Wiessen (2023), Francis Irv (New York, 2023) and ethall gallery (Barcelona, 2022), among others. In addition to his artistic practice, he is the founder of Printer Fault Press, a small-scale publishing house that he sees as a collaborative means to give space to the artistic practices of different authors.

OPEN CALL      
Call deadline: Until 09:00 a.m. on Monday, January 15, 2024.
Residence period: Between July 9 and December 30, 2024.

Required documentation and application deadline 
* Rules of the call and application form (PDF) >