This is a Place for Us

Iván Argote

Houten plank waaruit grote letters A en R gefreesd zijn, met bovenaan een smalle gefreesde horizontale lijn die door de top van de A loopt. Wooden plank showing large letters A and R milled out, with a narrow horizontal milled out part crossing the top part of the A.
Iván Argote. This is a Place for Us (detail test). courtesy of the artist. Photo: Joeri Thiry

A large-scale winding wooden path is stretched out over the inner courtyard of STUK. This is a Place for Us is a sculptural work by Colombian artist Iván Argote, conceived especially for the exhibition and realized by STUK’s technical team. The path invites you to walk across it, and whilst walking, to read the poem engraved on its surface:

THIS PLACE HAD NO NAME, THEN IT HAD MANY, THEN IT WON’T…
KISS MY EYES.
THIS PLACE HAS NO BOUNDARIES, IT’S A CONTINUOUS FLOW, A WAVE.
DEAR, WE ARE ALL HERE TOGETHER, THIS IS A PLACE FOR US.

Blending sculpture and poetics, substance and words, Argote continues a leitmotif lingering throughout the exhibition, implicitly tracing the red thread connected to love and belonging. This is a Place for Us is a continuation of works such as A Common Path, a permanent installation created for the Lyon Biennale (2024) and Bridges, we’re all others (2019), a work which you will be able to encounter on the UZ Gasthuisbergsite between February 2026 - 2027.

2026 – wooden installation, engraved text, overall dimensions: 1307 cm x 503 cm x 50 cm
Courtesy of the artist. Production on site: STUK Team (Anne Heyman, Babs Boey, Merlijn Bucher, Koen Dehaes, Hassel Dehaes, Erik Dehaes, Roel Penninckx, Mieke Winters) / CNC-cutting and engraving Karel Van Dael / hARTwork.
Commissioned by STUK, House for Dance, Image & Sound in the context of Grind Grind Grind, Release. An Exhibition as a Massage.
Man in het zwart gekleed staat met de handen achter de rug voor een roze muur waaraan een wit abstract schilderij hangt. Man dressed in black stands with the hands behind the back in front of a pink wall with a white abstract painting on the wall.

Iván Argote
°1983, Bogotá, Colombia

Iván Argote is an artist and film director. Through his sculptures, installations, films and interventions, he questions our intimate relationship with others, institutions, power and belief systems. He develops strategies based on tenderness, affect and humour through which he suggests critical approaches to dominant historical narratives and attempts to decentralise them. In his interventions on monuments, large-scale installations and performances, Argote proposes new symbolic uses of public space.

He has held solo exhibitions at major institutions, such as the Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Berlinische Galerie, Dortmunder Kunstverein, MALBA Museum, MAPS Museum, SCAD Museum of Art, and ASU Art Museum. He has also created significant public installations at the High Line (New York), MASP (São Paulo), Desert X (Coachella Valley), and permanent sculptures for Sorbonne University (Paris), the city of Antwerp, and Douala. His work has been featured in the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), 30th Sao Paulo Biennale (2012), Biennale de Lyon (2024), Bienal de Cuenca (2023), Thessaloniki (2015) among others, and is part of major prestigious collections, both private as well as institutional.

Argote lives and works in Paris. He has been represented by Perrotin Gallery globally since 2011, by Galería Vermelho in São Paulo since 2012 and by Galería Albarrán Bourdais in Madrid and Menorca since 2019.

Photo: Iván Argote © Claire Dorn