The Living by Sanam Khatibi
COME HOME TO A SPELLBINDING UNIVERSE
Sanam Khatibi draws you into a timeless world where humans and nature, fear and desire, cruelty and seduction are inseparably intertwined.
Welcome to Abby’s Living, the museum’s artistic living room. Every two years, a visual artist or artists’ collective is invited to completely redesign this space, fill the display case with a personal selection of pieces from the Abby collection and add new work of their own. The result is a unique total installation in which a collection presentation and an art installation merge, and which is only truly complete once visitors take a seat in it.
With the Living, Abby builds on the tradition of the Kortrijk Kunstwerkstede De Coene, where artists, designers and craftspeople worked together on innovative total interiors. Come in, take a seat and make yourself at home!
As part of the Stadsliving, Sanam Khatibi’s Living is free to access during the museum’s opening hours.
Sanam Khatibi is a Belgian artist who lives and works between Brussels and Paris. Painting lies at the centre of her practice, alongside sculpture, embroidery, installation, and tapestry. Her practice examines our reactions to situations of danger, trauma, disasters (manmade or environmental) and how we encounter power structures. Her work brings together human and animal figures, plants, landscapes, and objects in scenes that hover between beauty and unease, attraction and danger. She is interested in the ambiguities and predispositions that shape human behaviour, and in the tension between what we consider civilised and the more unruly forces that remain beneath the surface
The worlds Khatibi creates are seductive but never entirely safe. Lush vegetation, vivid colours, decorative patterns, and idyllic landscapes suggest a paradise, yet something darker is always taking place within it. Her figures follow their impulses, and acts of intimacy, play, violence, and domination can exist side by side. This tension between paradise and hell runs through her work: a world that appears harmonious on the surface but is governed by forces that are more primitive and unpredictable underneath.
At the centre of the installation hangs a monumental, hand-woven tapestry produced at the ateliers of Le Crécit in the Hainaut province. It depicts a seemingly paradisiacal landscape populated by figures engaged in ambiguous and sometimes disturbing activities. The landscape on the tapestry extends into the exhibition space. Exotic plants surround the objects and artworks, while a series of benches winds through the room like a snake, introducing both a practical and an almost living element into the architecture.
Read more about the work of Sanam Khatibi
The Recollection
Khatibi approaches the existing collection of Abby much as she approaches her own collection: intuitively, through attraction, association, and visual resonance. Paintings, sculptures, and a large number of artefacts, including everyday and utilitarian objects, are given a new context. In the display cases, these objects are arranged intuitively and brought into dialogue with a selection of her own works and collected objects.
The resulting living room is Khatibi’s interpretation of an existing collection, transformed into a space that belongs unmistakably to her own universe. The objects are absorbed into an environment shaped by her particular way of looking, collecting, and composing, which creates unexpected relationships between objects that originate in different contexts.
