The designer

Nel Verbeke (Belgium, 1989) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. With a background in visual art and a specialization in design and design research, Nel Verbeke is primarily a concept designer. Balancing between arts and design, her vocation will always be the emotional potential of shape and space. Fascinated by conceptual thinking, she shies away from the obvious focus. The concept serves as an ‘archway’ over the whole. Throughout her conceptual design practice, Nel Verbeke searches and formulates new arrangements of our material and immaterial surroundings. Her works and collections are alternative compositions of time, space, motion and acts. On the one hand, they question our relation to the ambivalence of our emotions. On the other hand, they suggest that the emotional states of mind could be habitable spaces: shelters for a deepened moment of introspection and contemplation. As a consequence of her motives and methods, Nel Verbeke chooses not to delineate her artistic practice too rigidly. She prefers to explore a peripheral area where the autonomy of the artistic creation always meets a suggestion of its possible use. Her language is poetic and oud of time and so questions our dominant ways of seeing, acting and living. Within her practice, Nel Verbeke collaborates with other designers and slow crafters. She considers the processes of creation as moments where tradition and innovation meet and become part of meaningful designs, responding to the needs and urgencies of our contemporary (co-)existence. Nel Verbeke shows her work in collaboration with Roehrs&Boetsch Gallery, Dutch Invertuals and as a participant of group exhibitions. Her work Mirror / Hourglass is part of the permanent collection of MUDAC, Musée de design et d’arts appliqués contemporains, Lausanne (CH).