I am interested in what happens when materials are left to themselves
— Edith Dekyndt
Edith Dekyndt (b. 1960, Ypres) is a Belgian artist whose practice investigates natural and cultural phenomena through a restrained, process-based approach. Working across video, sculpture, installation, drawing, sound, and performance, she frequently employs elemental and organic materials such as copper, gold, wood, wax, textiles, and woven or crafted forms. Through physical and chemical processes—oxidation, evaporation, corrosion, exposure—she explores states of transformation, ephemerality, and material instability. Time-based procedures activate gradual change within her works, foregrounding thresholds between visibility and disappearance.
While Dekyndt’s methods often evoke scientific experimentation, her approach remains resolutely subjective. Traditional materials associated with craft or ritual are placed in conditions that allow them to react, age, or deteriorate, producing subtle shifts shaped by time, light, and environmental forces. Rather than seeking analytical outcomes, her work reveals fragile and often elusive phenomena, situating formal concerns within physical reality and addressing broader questions of perception, knowledge, and attention.
Dekyndt presented her first solo exhibition with Konrad Fischer Galerie in Düsseldorf in 2017. Since then, her work has been the subject of numerous institutional solo exhibitions, most recently at Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2025), Fondation CAB, Saint-Paul-de-Vence (2024), Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2024), and the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris (2023). Earlier solo presentations include WIELS, Brussels (2016); Musée de l’Abbaye de Sainte-Croix, Les Sables-d’Olonne (2016); Le Consortium, Dijon (2015); and the Centre d’art contemporain, Lyon (2013). In 2024, she was an Artist-in-Residence at Fogo Island Arts.
Her work has also been featured in major international biennials, including the Taipei Biennial (2021), the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2020), the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de América del Sur (2019), and the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). Selected group exhibitions include recent presentations at WIELS, Brussels (2025); the Art Institute of Chicago (2025); ZKM | Karlsruhe (2025); Kunsthalle Hamburg (2022); GAMeC, Bergamo (2021); the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2017); S.M.A.K., Ghent; and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis.
Dekyndt’s works are held in prominent international collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Pinault Collection, Paris; CNAP, Paris; MUDAM, Luxembourg; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; and the Kadist Collection, Paris.
Dekyndt lives and works in Brussels and Berlin.