It was not until the pandemic lockdowns that I first began to see this city. 

Rue Lesbroussart, devoid of traffic, save for a lone Rolls Royce Phantom Series II quietly idling curbside beside a Carrefour Express. Its windows heavily tinted, obsidian surfaces reflecting emptiness on emptiness.

A pair of horse mounted police patrolling two abreast through the grounds of Park Forest in the early bloom of spring. Hooves padding loam, distant sounds of traffic, a gentle haze in gloam. Soft on soft on soft.

The built environment arrives with already existing narratives. Call them habits, customs, public rituals; they guide and goad each of us. From what roads we choose to walk down to when we avert eyes to avoid displeasure. If the story is already there and simply requires us, for it to trundle and untangle itself, then we are the transcribers, the annotators and the editors.

Residue of the pandemic can still be found in the daily textures of our lives, as something that is felt rather than observed. I have been reluctant to let go of this quality. Not the uncertainty, the economic precarity, or the raw fear of those years. But the intentioned space that it created. The focused intensity of time, of time arrested, that permitted a careful look at the world around me.

The cascading fragments and coiling decorative motifs of art nouveau. The accretions and crenulations of facades; decorative, functional, anachronistic. Architecture, but with a little a. Decrotoirs, surface mounted alarms, basement level iron bars, ground floor windows moonlighting as vitrines for fairy lights, trolls, angels, and indoor cats. The architectural equivalent of bric-a-brac.

Brussels revealed itself through lockdown. And through architecture and moments of happenstance, a pathway emerged, generating sculpture, video and performance. It is a story that I continue to try to tell.