Front Row with Eline De Clercq and Joris Thoné

M HKA and NICC warmly invite you to join us for an artist talk by Eline De Clercq & Joris Thoné on Thursday 26.02 at 19:00 at M HKA.

With support from Vitra Partner Store.

Eline De Clercq and Joris Thoné share the ongoing progress of their artistic research. Embracing the unfinished and unpolished, and remaining slightly wild, the talk includes notes on collaborative methods, decolonisation, climate change, queer nature, and other garden-related topics. Through raw images, halfway film documents, and research notes, they reflect on gardening as an artistic and political act in times of ecocide and climate urgency.

About Eline De Clercq

Eline De Clercq (she, her, we) is a multimedia artist and researcher. Her practice centres on ecology and art, with a focus on gardening, film, painting, drawing, writing. Educated formally as a painter at KASK Ghent, she received a parallel informal education as a gardener at the botanical garden, Ghent. Her practice has a diverse approach to artistic work; and involves collective practices, collaborations, research and gardening.

From 2019 to 2025, she cared for Gesamthof, a Trans and Lesbian Garden located between kunsthal Extra City and Morpho. The short film Gesamthof, A Lesbian Garden was made with Anne Reijniers in 2021. This art-nature project invites a curious audience to decolonial practices and storytelling in an ecofeminist garden. During art residencies in 2024 and 2025 in Japan she visited Japanese gardens and countryside, resulting in the collaborative maps made with Yoko Enoki. This ongoing project documents how to get lost in nature, and documents a subjective response to nature and climate change. Currently she works on her PhD research project Who and what makes the academy garden? and is a guest teacher at the In Situ department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

About Front Row
FRONT ROW is a monthly series of artists’ talks co-organised by M HKA and NICC. The programme offers audiences insight into artistic production while foregrounding the specific conditions, contexts, and questions that shape contemporary artistic practice.
Open to a range of formats – from talks and idea presentations to lecture-performances – FRONT ROW provides space for reflection on art, culture, and society through the work of some of today’s most compelling artists.
With a shared commitment to supporting artists, nurturing international perspectives and sparking dialogue, M HKA and NICC warmly invite you to take part in a collective exploration of the evolving forms of artistic practice and their imaginative potential.

Practical information
Thursday 26.02, 19:00
M HKA auditorium
Free access
In English

Free entrance, reserve your spot here

Announcement

Earlier, Tai Shani was scheduled to take part in this edition of FRONT ROW, but for personal reasons she will not be able to participate. We are pleased to announce that we have found a replacement speaker: Eline De Clercq, who will take the FRONT ROW stage tonight.

The practical information remains unchanged.

We hope to welcome you and thank you for your understanding regarding this unforeseen change.