LEUVEN.- M Leuven is presenting the first solo exhibition in Belgium by internationally acclaimed Polish-German artist Alicja Kwade. Her monumental and poetic work fills seven of the museum’s rooms from 10 October 2025 onwards. The exhibition is the highlight of M’s autumn programme and is part of KU Leuven’s 600th anniversary celebrations.

"The exhibition is part of KU Leuven’s 600th anniversary celebrations, which focus on reflection. What is the relationship between science, time, and human insight? Kwade’s work offers a poetic and critical response to this question." — Bert Cornillie, Alderman for Culture and Chair of M Leuven’s Board of Directors.

Kwade creates installations that inspire wonder and reflection. Her sculptures and spatial interventions blur the lines between art and science, as well as between intellect and intuition. Through reflections, repetitions, and a blend of natural materials and everyday objects, she invites viewers to examine how they perceive, make sense of, and structure the world. Her work raises profound questions: What is reality? What is time? What does it mean ‘to know’?

Her research is closely linked to ‘the poetics of not knowing’ and how this plays a central role in both science and the arts.

M’s exhibition provides a curated overview of her recent work and features new installations created specifically for Leuven.

An internationally recognized artist

Alicja Kwade (b. 1979, Katowice, Poland) lives and works in Berlin. She rose to international prominence wither her work for the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. ‘WeltenLinie’ (2017), a labyrinthine installation fashioned from steel, mirrors, stone, bronze, aluminium and wood, created a sensation at the end of the Arsenale. Another work, ‘Pars pro Toto’ (2017),comprising thirteen large natural stone spheres, was exhibited outdoors on the Arsenale quay. The stone was sourced from all over the world. A poetic reflection on material, gravity and perspective.

In 2019, Kwade was awarded the prestigious Roof Garden Commission by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There she installed ‘ParaPivot’, a piece with steel structures in which solid stones appear to float in a delicate balance. The work invites reflection on our place in the universe.

More recently, her work could be seen at the Museum Voorlinden (the Netherlands) in the solo exhibition ‘Die Notwendigkeit der Dingen’ (The Necessity of Things).

The exhibition title: ‘Dusty Die’

‘Dusty Die’ combines two words that reference both matter and fate. Dusty evokes the image of a dust-covered object, frozen and motionless. Dust is also an ancient symbol for transience and the passage of time – ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’. Equally, it plays a crucial role in our view of the universe: without dust particles in the air and microscopic aerosols, there would be no blue sky, just the blackness of space. These particles scatter the light and give the sky its colour.

Die can be interpreted in two ways. As a noun, it refers to a die – an item that evokes ideas about chance, probability and destiny. In this sense, it resonates with Albert Einstein’s famous statement ‘God does not play dice’ (Gott würfelt nicht), in which he expressed his doubts about pure chance as the guiding principle of the universe. Here, however, it is less about the game and more about mathematics, the cosmos and the unpredictable systems that shape our reality.

Together, ‘dust’ and ‘die’ form a title that encompasses both the microscopic and the cosmic: from the dust in our atmosphere to dice as a symbol of fate. It connects our immediate, dusty reality with the space beyond our atmosphere – and with other works by Alicja Kwade, such as the blue-painted room with lapis lazuli, in which pigment and cosmos converge.

New work for M Leuven

“We are thrilled that M. is presenting Alicja Kwade’s first solo exhibition in Belgium. Her work succeeds in translating philosophical questions about time, reality, and perception into an extraordinarily visual and tangible form.” — Eva Wittocx, Curator

Kwade developed new work for the exhibition at M. In ‘Blue Days Dust’, she transformed a room into an immersive deep-blue space, using paint mixed with real lapis lazuli. At the centre is a giant block of the mineral weighing 2,180 kg.

Lapis lazuli is a deep blue rock from which the pigment ultramarine has been extracted since ancient times. It was – and still is – mined in what is now Afghanistan. From there, it spread to Europe via the Silk Road. Only 20 to 30 grams of ultramarine can be extracted from a single kilogram of lapis lazuli. The pigment was therefore costly and even more valuable than gold during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It was reserved for images of saints and, in particular, for the cloak of the Virgin Mary. Synthetic variants appeared in the 19th century.

Kwade sees the installation as a time capsule that transports us back to geological processes from millions of years ago. At the same time, she invites reflection on how we assign value to objects and materials such as precious stones. She sees this value as culturally determined rather than absolute.

Other works

Other works in the exhibition include ‘Substance’, an installation of steel frames with mirrors and diverse objects. This is a variation on the well-known ‘WeltenLinie’, which Kwade first presented at the Venice Biennale in 2017 and more recently at Museum Voorlinden.

A new work, ‘Superheavy Skies’, is also on display. Boulders of various sizes are suspended from impressive, monumental mobiles. Despite their apparent weight, they seem to hover gently in space.

A new public artwork

Prior to the exhibition opening at M, Alicja Kwade installed a new work in Leuven’s Stadspark on 17 May 2025. It forms part of the art project ‘And So, Change Comes in Waves’, for which sixteen national and international artists have created works in the public domain.

Kwade’s contribution is a monumental sculpture: a boulder supported by a circle of chairs. These are replicas of the seats that Kwade collected from various faculties and buildings at KU Leuven, including lecture halls, professors’ offices, and even the historic salon of the rector. They represent all strata of the university community.

In this work, Kwade makes the weight of ‘not knowing’ tangible by visualizing the absence of scientific knowledge as a boulder. Science is confronted with an ever-expanding array of global challenges for which there are no answers (yet). At the same time, ‘not knowing’ is the driving force behind scientific research and the greatest source of wonder.

Kwade emphasizes that this state of ‘not-knowing’ is carried by a variety of people, including researchers, managers, administrators, students, and support staff. Collectively, they enable the institution to engage in research, thereby expanding understanding and disseminating knowledge. Ultimately, science is an inherently human pursuit: a never-ending journey, marked by highs and lows.

Kwade was born in Katowice, Poland, and is the daughter of a cultural scientist. At the age of eight, the family fled to West Germany. In 2005, she obtained her degree in sculpture from the Universität der Künste in Berlin, where she now lives and works.

She has previously exhibited at venues including the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the MIT List Visual Arts Centre in Cambridge (USA), the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in Berlin, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art and Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich.

She gained international recognition for her participation in the 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and for her installation on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2019).

Her work is included in numerous public collections, including Centre Pompidou (Paris), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington), LACMA – Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mudam – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Luxembourg) and mumok – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (Vienna).