Artist, curator, text designer and teacher, Raphaëlle Serres develops a practice attentive to the many facets of language: typography is approached as a tool in the service of subjects, objects, poetic experimentations and identity systems. She collaborates with various cultural institutions, non-profit organisations and art schools. Her artistic practice includes a self-initiated experimental curatorial research project, a§s, within which she develops the
Typography is one of the most abstract forms of communication. Glyphs, signs and writing systems are composed from powerful symbols, while retaining a fundamental capacity to produce meaning within an autonomous formal economy. Printed media, printing systems and their mediums are approached as a field of plastic and artistic experimentation, where know-how, techniques, accidents, degradations and uses become constitutive elements of experimental propositions, engaging both a sensitive and situated understanding of these multiple spaces. These practices may be understood as editorial practices in an expanded sense: they involve operations of arrangement, translation, formatting and reproduction. Emerging from systems of language, they extend from the assembly of signs or images to their spatial deployment, from printed media to exhibition devices, and operate as processes of mediation—between glyphs and supports, forms and objects, uses and functions—while engaging ways of being in the world and of making society.
These different dimensions—artistic, aesthetic, editorial, curatorial and relational—are articulated through a constant attention to the forms of language, their materialities and their conditions of appearance. Signs, images and printed objects are considered as units capable of producing new connections through their relationships. The notion of the multiple occupies a central place. This approach also entails particular attention to conditions of reception, modes of presence and spaces of hospitality, while developing a critical reflection on artistic institutions, their modes of operation and the possibilities of producing alternative, experimental and reversible structures. This multiplicity engages different positions of care: collecting, archiving, arranging, producing, exhibiting, publishing, organising, sharing, hosting. Practices of care run through all of these gestures. Signs, images and printed objects are conceived as units capable of renewing narratives through their relations, repetitions and transformations. Thus, the multiple asserts itself in a dynamic that is both operative and critical.
This plastic practice is organised around moments of composition and sculptural installation. It frequently relies on the arrangement of series of objects, a priori identical, whose placement on the floor structures and grids the space. These ensembles interrogate the notion of the multiple—understood through its dimensions of repetition, variation, circulation, proliferation and edition. The multiple is approached both as a material condition (linked to logics of printing and reproduction) and as a tool for questioning regimes of value, visibility and circulation of objects. Placed directly on the ground, these elements create forms of congestion that constrain movement, alter circulation and complicate conditions of perception. They emphasise a physical relationship to the exhibition space, in which repetition becomes both a landscape and a process.
This logic unfolds in close relation to two-dimensional propositions, most often on paper and presented on the wall, framed. These take the form of assemblages or collages made from collected elements, largely sourced from recycling or second-hand circuits. Reorganised according to principles borrowed from or derived from typography—glyphs, symbols, lines, grids, rhythms, masses, greys, scales—these compositions extend and displace the stakes of the multiple into other contexts. The articulation between these two regimes—floor installation and wall compositions—allows for the coordination of different narrative potentials. The multiplied objects activate serial and spatial logics, while the paper compositions engage other principles of reading and interpretation. Together, they form systems of signs in which structures derived from language shift towards tactile, sensitive and concrete dimensions, producing complex narrative forms through relations, variations and interpolations.
talking dolls is a research project devoted to speaking dolls, imbued with life, considered as objects in which language confers a form of presence. At the intersection of fiction and reality, these figures allow for the exploration of relationships between language, anthropomorphism and projection. The project draws on a set of narratives, objects and figures—dolls, puppets, humanoid robots, artificial intelligences, interactive creatures or avatars—through which forms of attachment and life are replayed. Giving voice to these objects is to attribute to them a capacity to act, to recognise their agency, while revealing systems of dependency and control. These figures also highlight ambivalent forms of care: designed to accompany, assist, entertain or replace, they embody gestures of care as much as they expose relations of domination, fantasy or instrumentalisation. They appear as presences that are both active and constrained, caught in scenarios where hospitality, desire and fiction intertwine. Through this research, the speaking doll becomes a tool for analysing the links between language and power: who speaks, through whom, and under what conditions. It reveals forms of address and listening in which language acts as a relational device capable of producing attachments, beliefs and identifications. talking dolls thus proposes to consider these objects as surfaces of projection where narratives, desires and relational models are replayed, between presence and simulation.
Cradled in a shell, a grain of sand becomes a pearl draws on its own statement as a compositional principle. Inspired by the discreet yet powerful process of pearl formation—where a foreign element, cradled within a shell, is gradually enveloped in nacre—the exhibition interrogates phenomena of transformation, protection, crisis or chrysalis. The pearl is approached simultaneously as form, sign and process: point, circle, sphere—it becomes a unit capable of producing meaning through repetition, variation and displacement. A set of objects arranged on the floor—sculptures, assemblages, collected elements—evokes several variations around this motif, from a regular rounded point to the organic forms of baroque pearls or shells. Partly drawn from an intimate field, these objects compose a familiar and enveloping environment, activated by a strong tactile dimension. Handleable, they engage a sensory experience in which touch extends vision. Among them, a net made of more than 70,000 glass beads, patiently woven by my hands, introduces a very extended temporality. The repetition of the object combined with that of the gesture allows a dense form to emerge from a simple and serial element.
The articulation between these objects and their spatial arrangement composes a system of relations in which the pearl, as a motif, successively unfolds as index, material, and then as method or reflection on how forms are constructed, circulate and produce meaning. The exhibition thus proposes inhabiting a space where objects, gestures and signs envelop one another, giving rise to propositions that are both sensitive and narrative—forms that, like the pearl, grow over time, in layers, through contact with what passes through them.
My artistic practice integrates a set of roles articulating plastic, curatorial, experimental, pedagogical, technical and relational dimensions. This plurality engages different modes of attention and care depending on the context: artist, curator, text designer and teacher, where personal productions intersect with exhibition practices, publishing, pedagogy and hospitality. This multiplicity reflects a structural condition requiring constant adjustments; it constitutes both a framework and a field of observation, in which practices of care, attention and hospitality play a central role.
In this vein, the a§s project serves as an active space for research and experimentation. a§s is a tool for aesthetic, philosophical, political and poetic experimentation. Every second Wednesday of the month, a§s invites speakers, artists and researchers to explore a desire that they can develop into a proposal to be shared publicly. Self-initiated and built on multiple collaborations, this project is a space for meeting, reinventing and recognising our identities. This curatorial practice is conceived as both an artistic and social gesture grounded in hospitality. It consists in creating the conditions necessary for the emergence of propositions, taking into account their affective, intuitive and situated dimensions. The project thus introduces a research axis centred on desire as a dynamic to be accompanied. This stance takes shape through attention to forms of presence, availability and listening, echoing the figure of the host—a discreet yet structuring presence that supports without imposing. This role, both relational and political, produces a space where expression can unfold freely, within an economy that privileges experience over formalisation. All those gathered unite in affirming free expression, in an exercise that may reflect, express, sketch, depict—or confront—the world; and through this act, it becomes possible to grasp a moment of it, allowing that world to gently expand. The exhibition then becomes only a moment of illumination—nothing more, nothing less than the surfacing of an intuition, a desire powerful enough to emerge.
The a§s project has enabled me to collaborate, as a curator (as well as author and artistic director), with numerous artists on their projects, including Naomi Gilon, Rêver d’ombre et de lumière ; Matthieu Michaut, Feu au lac ; Cécile Barraud de Lagerie & Pauline Rivière, Violet ABC ; François Patoue, ART TABAC ; Morgane Le Ferec, Boueuses ; Tommy Lecot, Bienvenue! Welkom! ; Mia Brena-Minetti, Allô! ; 1ND3X, Audimat ; Corey Bartle-Sanderson, Carriers ; Naoki Karathanassis, Out of Mind ; Pauline van der Ghinst, Sometimes we just have to accept it as God's will ; Elias Sanhaji, 96-06-26 ; Léo Grégoire, Everytime you blink you feel it change ; Mia Brena Minetti & Lieven Dousselaere, Allô!—Acte 2 ; Inès Guffroy, Exposition de tableaux à vendre ; and many others. Entirely self-initiated and without budget, this project relies solely on the desire to create of those who take part. I therefore assume all its various roles: from curation to artistic direction, including production, communication, graphic design, writing, documentation and photography, as well as its archiving. The entirety of the project, along with all archives resulting from these encounters and propositions, is gathered on the website www.a-s-s-s.com.
I take this opportunity to thank all those who have encountered this project, directly or indirectly. In particular, I would like to thank Éléonore Bonello, who coordinates with spasss, the venue hosting the project, and who supports Renaud Backelandt through their invaluable and unwavering support. Both have also enabled me to become more broadly involved within the non-profit organisation, as curator and artistic director—together, we sustain a platform for artistic and cultural experimentation dedicated to contemporary creation in Brussels.
The a§s project has also enabled the development of the
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SIGNS—FICTION is a solo exhibition proposing a dispositif combining a floor installation with a set of two-dimensional works composed from printed objects. This dispositif activates a system of signs conceived as motifs, punctuation marks and markers distributed throughout space. On the ground, a series of forged iron tie rods is arranged in a regular grid, structuring the space and guiding circulation. This framework produces a landscape of signs that organises and maps the exhibition space. The project focuses on a hybrid motif, somewhere between cross and star *̟+x†Xx×, deployed across different forms—objects, collages, prints. This sign circulates across multiple registers: typographic symbols, technical printing marks, mathematical signs or vernacular elements, generating a play of shifts and associations. The collages extend these logics using printed and collected elements, mobilising narrative principles of assemblage and montage. A printed object accompanies the exhibition, bringing together textual and visual fragments drawn from varied contexts. Through juxtaposition, these extend the compositional work and activate new relations between signs and narratives. The whole forms a space structured by repetition and relational arrangements of motifs, where signs become active elements of both composition and reading.
The solo-show SANDBOX, presented by SB34 at The Pool (2024, Brussels), crystallises these explorations. The exhibition takes as its starting point a poem of our own composition—“There exist deserts, arid and burning, within sandpits”—and the installation articulates three working phases and, by extension, three architectural principles: a phase of study, a phase of construction, and a phase of ruin. These three moments are not sequential but coexist as possible states of the same material. The exhibition space is conceived as a field of experimentation in which sculptures embody different modes of working. The ruin zone, artificial in nature, is notably composed of oversized King mint lozenges (or plaster).
Our duo also develops surface*contact, a self-produced periodical journal; this editorial project constitutes a space for poetic experimentation around a folded printed object. Together, we have also co-signed the visual and graphic identity of SB34, the artistic and editorial direction of the book Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders by Simon Asencio & Pauline Hatzigeorgiou, the visual identity of the Toujours, the exhibition Changement de propriétaire (Barbara Club, 2021), as well as the works Système sommaire (2023), Torquatus (2021), La mariée (2025), for the exhibitions Piccalilli Fundraiser (Piccalilli, London, England, 2022), Â vue d’œil mieux vaut tendre l’oreille (*Duuu Radio, Gennevilliers, France, 2021), Toujours (Pal Project, Paris, France, 2020), Sweethearts (Barbara Club, web, 2020), Tchao Paulo (StudioLiedts, Bruxelles, Belgique, 2019), Schismes (Kanal – Centre Pompidou, Bruxelles, Belgique, 2019), It’s not too late to seek a newer world, you know... (Shipment, London—UK, 2019) and the talk Visiting the Studio—Who is in? au Beursschouwburg (Bruxelles, 2023). Altogether, these experiences within the Raphaël Matieu duo condense a field of learning through which formal and conceptual tools have progressively been developed. They lay the foundations for a subsequent practice that continues to explore the relationships between language, space, publishing and exhibition.
Graduating with a Master’s degree in Typography, my graphic practice unfolds within the field of editorial design and contemporary typography, forming both a technical and conceptual foundation. It is grounded in an ongoing attention to the forms of text as visual, structural and relational material, whose modes of appearance condition circulation and use. While it has long been shaped by the design of identity systems, typefaces and books, this practice has gradually moved beyond design to anchor itself within plastic and artistic practices.
This practice is mainly exercised in commissioned and collaborative contexts, as a freelance artistic director and text designer, or—as was the case between 2021 and 2024—within the design studio La Villa Hermosa alongside Ayoh Kré Duchâtelet, Lionel Maes and Thy Nguyên Truong Minh. It takes form through visual identity systems, editorial projects, book design, institutional materials and communication devices for cultural and artistic organisations such as Atelier 210, la Biennale de Lubumbashi, BNA-BBOT, Design Museum Brussels, FOMU Antwerp, Kunstenfestivaldesarts (2022—2024), Re-connect Project (TU Berlin), Revue Sika, as well as for artists and researchers such as Sasha Huber (You Name It, book design), Sammy Baloji (The King's Order to Dance, text design) or Sandrine Collard (Recaptioning Congo, book design—hailed by the New York Times as one of the best art books of 2022).
Across this field of signs, and at the origin of these experimentations, lies an attention to spaces of emptiness, whiteness and margins, conceived as active forces of composition. As in Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, where composition involves working with the void through relations between forms and intervals. Emptiness acts as a material in its own right. It is not an absence, but a condition of appearance: that through which forms emerge, become legible and enter into relation. It organises as much as it exposes, functioning as an active surface where rhythms, hierarchies and modes of reading are constructed. To think forms is to think their counter-forms as constitutive. White spaces are neither neutral nor erased; they act as perceptual material that modulates intensities, structures reading and enables relations between signs. Void and fullness thus become inseparable categories within the same system of appearance. Emptiness emerges as a space traversed by tensions and arrangements. It is what allows forms to emerge, but also what continuously alters and reconfigures them. Aesthetic experience, for instance, unfolds precisely within this relation: it is not only the perception of forms, but the experience of the intervals that make them possible. The subject occupies an active position, as an instance of reading and projection.
These concerns are particularly condensed within typographic systems. Typography is not limited to organising signs: it structures emptiness in order to produce meaning. Counter-forms, spacing, kerning, letter-spacing, margins, inner whites and compositional rhythms contribute as much to the construction of meaning as the forms themselves. Drawing a glyph is to organise relationships between filled forms and counter-forms, where emptiness plays a structural role—equally designed. Typography is built upon its spaces of silence—silence perhaps being the only unit common to all forms of language—where whites constitute a primary material around which everything else is consolidated. These logics extend into exhibition spaces, which engage these conditions of visibility and relation between objects, subjects and spaces. Devices inherited from the White Cube, often mistakenly presented as neutral, in fact act as active matrices of perception, operating through contrast. Emptiness becomes a surface of inscription, conditioning relations as much as it makes them possible. To compose is to organise relations within a space already structured by emptiness. It is within this interweaving that the very possibility of experience unfolds.
Thus, might a form be nothing other than what the void calls forth?
© Raphaëlle Serres (text-symbol·s)™, 2026 ®. All rights reserved*.
The body text has been composed in EB Garamond.