Anatomies of Use
April 4–June 7, 2026
Since the 2000s, Mexican-Japanese artist Hisae Ikenaga (born 1977 in Mexico City) has been developing a sculptural practice based on the collection, displacement, and recomposition of everyday objects drawn from the industrial world and our domestic environment. Through this act of decontextualization, she creates sculptures and hybrid assemblages in which standardized production and artisanal gestures confront each other, navigating between solidity and fragility, between use and contemplation.
For her first solo exhibition in Belgium, Hisae Ikenaga presents a selection of both existing and new works. They reflect her interest in industrial processes, archaeological remains, and laboratory environments, as well as her ongoing exploration of our relationship with objects—their history, production, and function. Each piece reveals the artist’s ability to subtly highlight the tension between familiarity and strangeness.
The exhibition’s title, Anatomies of Use, echoes these subtle shifts that structure her practice: transformations of status, function, and meaning. Her compositions, situated in an inter-disciplinary space, open a field of indeterminacy where new uses and narratives can emerge. They invite viewers to slow down, observe, and rethink their perception of space and objects, revealing forms that are at once poetic and reflective.
The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between KIOSK in Ghent and The Konschthal Esch in Luxembourg, and has been co-curated by Simon Delobel and Charlotte Masse, curator in charge of exhibitions at the Konschthal Esch, and who organized Ikenaga’s major solo exhibition Phantom Limbs in 2024. Hisae Ikenaga received the generous support of the Fondation Schleich-Lentz for the production of a new series of works for the exhibition at KIOSK. With the support of Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg. All works courtesy of the artist and Nosbaum Reding Gallery, Luxembourg-Brussels & Max Estrella, Madrid.
