The second chapter of Poetics of hospitality takes a look at the expectations, doubts and hopes that guests and hosts may hold towards each other. Observing this suspended moment, right before the door opens. Where until the encounter happens, the other is still for a few more seconds a mental projection, a glimpse of an unknown territory.

The group exhibition The waiting room brings together artists Emma Cogné, Eline Harmse and Sina Hensel. It draws on the historical context of the space, which was originally conceived as a waiting room for pregnant women during the period that the building housing the present-day KASK Conservatorium & School of Art Gent was a city hospital, and whose function was to separate these women from other patients and thus shield them from any kind of infection.

Through their individual interventions, the three artists summon the former figure of these awaiting bodies. And, in a very personal way, each of them initiates a process of rediscovery and reaffirmation of the space. In a continuous back-and-forth between inside and outside, their installations and sculptures unfold, meet, warm up or dress the space and momentarily conjure up ideal or idealized conditions of waiting.

Poetics of hospitality is an artistic and curatorial reflection conceived as a series in three chapters addressing the notion of hospitality and the unspoken rules that underlie this universally-shared custom. The word hospitality in and of itself – derived from the Latin word hospes, which means both ‘host’- the one who receives – and ‘guest’ – the one who is received – invokes the complexity of the host-hosted relationship.

Departing from the form of the pavilion, a transitional structure which challenges the concepts of property, territoriality and borders, Poetics of hospitality invites artists to question their link to this space as potential guests or hosts.


Poetics of hospitality
Chapter II - The waiting room
Opening: Thursday 17.03.22, 5 – 9 PM
Exhibition: 18.03 – 24.04.22, open at all hours

Het Paviljoen
KASK & Conservatorium / School of Arts Gent
Louis Pasteurlaan 2 - 9000 Ghent

Photo credit: Sean Charlton White