Salad Days refers to the days full of innocence and fun of our youth. It can also refer to the peak of one's ability. The term comes from Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra, first act, scene 5, where Cleopatra says: ‘My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood, To say as I said then!’
Design Museum Ghent once again presents graduation projects by students from KASK & Conservatory and LUCA School of Arts Ghent. In DING Vitrine (Drabstraat 2, 9000 Gent), you will discover a magically strange mix of a falling astronaut, a queer kinship cooking video, an emotional AI analysis of objects, a braided kanekalon curtain, a leporello with (un)fallen women, pixelated memories of Afghan refugees, a steel lamp inspired by Venetian sandwiches and an organically changing felt carpet.
Also mark the finissage on Sunday 13.10.2024 in your diary. More information will follow!
Sara Boumkwo (LUCA | MA graphic design) Dear Sara, 2024 kanekalon (synthetic hair)
Sara Boumkwo is a visual artist with Belgian and Cameroonian roots, whose work explores her identity, woven between two distinct cultures. Using textiles as her medium, she unveils the complexities of belonging and identity, drawing from personal experiences to reflect on the broader Afro-European identity narrative.
In Dear Sara, the artist examines the relationship between Black women and Western beauty standards. Growing up as a mixed child in a predominantly white environment, Boumkwo became acutely aware of the lack of representation and societal pressures surrounding beauty ideals. Early exposure to mainstream media, like Disney, inundated her with messages about gender, femininity, and beauty ideals. Drawing on childhood memories, she reenacts photographs of herself dressed as a princess. This reenactment process opens a dialogue between her present and younger selves, confronting the Western beauty standards she once internalized. A key piece, a curtain made of braided kanekalon (synthetic hair), symbolizes the importance of hair as a powerful expression of identity in Black culture, representing the layers of her identity.
Sam Evers (LUCA | MA graphic design) Object and Interpretation: A Material Analysis, 2024 paper
AI’s Emotional Analysis, 2024 paper
Sam Evers' graduation project consists of four publications that interpret a collection of objects from various perspectives, questioning their vitality. Growing up with flea markets as a weekly activity sparked Sam's passion for researching and curating eclectic collections of unrelated objects. The publications made for her master’s project include a systematic collage of collected objects, image transformations, AI-driven emotional analyses, and dialogues between everyday tools. Additionally, Sam has written a thesis exploring the various scientific, artistic, and philosophical interpretations of objects and collections. The project further investigates whether objects themselves possess agency and exert a certain influence on us, specifically examining how objects might seem to draw us in and why certain objects evoke a connection while others leave us unaffected.
Natalija Gucheva (KASK | fine arts) Home is Where the Heart is (a collective recipe), 2023/2024 video performance (10:42)
Natalija Gucheva (she/they) is a visual artist and curator with a focus on performance and installation practices. Her visual practice explores the intersection of social politics and emotional embodiment, examining how personal experience shapes collective narratives through the integration of feminist and queer care practices. Her creative process involves constructing speculative environments where communal bonding contributes to a sustained healing journey, acknowledging the connection and interdependence between communities and their non-human fellows.
Home is Where the Heart is connected 10 individuals into a collective who attended the first gathering of her ongoing project The Kinship Cookbook, titled Home Sweet Home. Through reading and writing together, following a participant’s performance, creating an ephemeral in-situ installation using personal offerings and a communal dinner, the group set off to rethink the domestic as a transformative site of diverse values. During these collective moments, the participants wrote recipes, which Gucheva later activated through performance, sculptural interventions, and installations. These artistic actions highlighted the importance of embracing our queer kinships and exploring diverse embodiments of human and non-human nature.
Marthe Huyse (KASK | grafisch ontwerp) (Un)Fallen Women II, 2022-2023 manual print on plywood, steel piano hinges
Marthe Huyse is a Ghent-based designer, editor and artist whose interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of books, bodies and identities. By rewriting, reinterpreting and sharing stories and knowledge, Huyse explores the performativity of the body, with a particular focus on feminist and queer perspectives. Their work highlights the power of collectivity, the value of tactility and the ever-changing nature of identity, where social context and personal motivation are closely intertwined.
In works such as (Un)Fallen Women, historical and contemporary images of bodies are revised, reimagined and curated, proposing a new lens to subvert traditional gaze. By using different media and approaches, Huyse explores the complex relationship between identity and corporeality, inviting the audience to join in thinking about how they constantly evolve within changing social and cultural contexts.
Fatemeh Khezri (KASK | autonomous design) Perpetual Other, 2024 video of pixel paintings and text
Ghent-based Iranian multidisciplinary-artist Fatemeh Khezri blends traditional techniques with futuristic elements in her work. With a background in calligraphy, she has developed a distinctive style of pixel painting that merges video game aesthetics with folklore-inspired content. Her master’s project, Perpetual Other, presents a personal interpretation of history by sharing the stories of Afghan refugees. Khezri asked them, "What is Afghanistan like?"—inviting them to reconstruct their homeland through personal memories rather than media stereotypes. By doing so, she explored how biases and self-deceptions function as coping mechanisms, allowing individuals to maintain resilience in adversity. Focusing on displacement and the constant instability of refugee life, the project examines how these experiences reshape both one’s identity and perception of the world.
In her master’s presentation, participants engaged with a 4D soundscape via a wearable burqa-helmet, which altered their auditory experience and immersed them in the disorienting realities of isolation and displacement. Accompanying this were pixel drawings of memories and locations, forming an emotional landscape. At DING Vitrine, these pixel drawings, interwoven with text from the audio stories, are featured in a video.
Stefanie Salzmann is a visual artist living in Brussels and Ried-Brig who creates sculptural and wall-based works using raw wool and natural dyes, focusing on the interconnectedness of all elements involved in the making process. Her artistic practice begins with materials, such as the wool from her family's Blacknose sheep in Valais (CH), a byproduct of sheep farming. She transforms these undervalued materials into tapestries and sculptures, using craft techniques like felting to explore the insulating and protective qualities of wool. This process allows her to engage with natural elements like flowers, water, and heat, building an alternate reality of care.
For her master’s project, Salzmann created a hand-felted, spatial sculpture that embodies cyclical time, designed to change shape and size through activation, reflecting growth, decay, and renewal. The meaning and rituals of the crafting process are central to her work, as she physically and mentally accompanies the materials from animal or plant to sculpture. Her experience as a fashion designer and residencies in Mexico and Japan have influenced her practice, while natural dyes and felted wool tell their own stories. Salzmann’s intimate textures seek to connect with the viewer’s body, creating spaces that offer shelter and have their own lived-in sense of time.
Hazel Ver Moesen (KASK | fine arts) Tramezzini, 2024 stainless steel, LED TL, rivets, lacquer
Hazel Ver Moesen is a Ghent-based artist whose practice focuses on creating objects primarily from wood and metal, influenced by carpentry traditions where materials and finishes like lacquer play a crucial role. Her work balances between design and sculpture, with a strong focus on form and colour.
Drawing inspiration from architecture, nature, and everyday tools, Hazel's creations evoke a sense of collective nostalgia. Recently, her practice has delved into natural and rural elements, which she abstracts and transforms through her unique visual language. The process of working with materials is key to her, where craftsmanship and the journey of making play a fundamental role in shaping her work. Her use of vivid colors and careful attention to detail result in works that blur the boundaries between functionality and artistic expression.
