Michiko Van de Velde

Born in 1994 (Brasschaat, Belgium), Belgo/Japanese, works and lives in Brussels (B)

About the Artist

The works of Michiko Van de Velde are related to her observations of sunlight at specific times and places. She experiences sunlight as an encounter. She seeks to capture sunlight’s apparitions before its nuances and changes disap-pears. Through a plurality of media (painting, ceramics, site specific artworks, etchings, books and video), she shares these short-lived experiences as attempts to accept the irreversibility of time.

Born in 1994, Van de Velde grew up in a family of musicians between two cultures. Following her parents on concert tours as a child, she travelled extensively between Belgium and Japan. These travels sparked her curiosity about col-ours, intensities, and shapes of sunlight, as well as a fascination with stage lighting in concert halls.

Her observations were first expressed through oil painting at the age of 7. She then studied at the National School of Visual Art of La Cambre and at the Central Saint Martins School in London. Her first solo show was at the Japanse Tuin, the biggest Japanese garden in Europe, in Hasselt (2019), followed by a solo exhibition at the Galerie Quai4 in Liège (2022) and at the Michèle Schoonjans Gallery in Brussels(2023). She was artist in residence at the Fondation Boghossian (2022), at the Fonds Félicien Rops (2021) and at the Fondation Privée du Carrefour des arts (2020). Her work has been part of several group shows, for example at the Diözesanmuseum Rottenburg (Germany), in 2022.  Most recently, she just exhibited her first solo exhibition in Tokyo (Nihombashi) with the Ichibanboshi Gallery and is currently preparing a monumental site-specific installation that plays with the shadow of the Cathédrale Notre Dame of Tournai, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.