Visual artist Florence Coenraets lives and works in Brussels. She initiates intimate dialogues with the material world, interrogating our relationship with objects and, by extension, our environment. She has been exploring and working with feathers for many years, a natural medium that fascinates her greatly. Born in Eupen, Belgium, she studied at the Institut d’Architecture Victor Horta and worked in various architecture offices before obtaining her master’s degree at the Sint Lukas School of Arts, where she developed a project involving hybrid headpieces. She then further developed her millinery skills, where she first encountered feathers, a medium she has embraced ever since. She followed a featherwork course at the Académie des Métiers d’Art in Paris, which inspired her to create various artistic projects based on the physical and emotional characteristics of feathers.
Her work has been featured internationally; she was part of the A World of Feathers exhibition at the Volkenkunde Museum in Leiden and the Etnografiska Museet in Stockholm. As well as in important museums in Belgium including in the group exhibition Animal textile at TAMAT, Musée de la Tapisserie et des Arts Textiles de Wallonie-Bruxelles and in hosting at Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels. Her headpieces were presented in various shows in Brussels such as Nationa(a) l expo store, Design September, Belgium is fashion, as well as at Designsupermarket in Prague.
In 2015, Florence Coenraets received the Weekend Fashion Award in the accessories category for her “coherent, fresh and singular” work. Her headpieces were presented during the défilé Cohort at WIELS. Her participatory project mixing millinery and photography was shown at the Maison des Cultures de Saint Gilles and in the Musée Royal d’Afrique centrale in Tervuren. Since 2022, Coenraets is represented by Spazio Nobile. She took part with the gallery in a dozen group exhibitions at PAD London, PAD Paris, Nomad St. Moritz and in Brussels, before holding her first solo exhibition, Immersions, at Spazio Nobile Gallery in Brussels in 2024. Raw materials and the energy that emanates from them form the basis of her artistic explorations, and by incorporating ancestral techniques into her practice, Coenraets interweaves the sacred and the contemporary to create unique pieces.
November, 2024 I Le Soir I So Soir I Les harmonies de Florence Coenraets
Spazio Nobile Éditions – Florence Coenraets : Immersions
