For this year’s Pride exhibition at Casstl, Yves de Brabander and Cédric Jacquemyn present Absence, returned.

The exhibition brings together two distinct artistic practices shaped by years of shared life and ongoing exchange. Their proximity has created a subtle conversation between their works, where materials, images and ways of perceiving the world encounter one another without dissolving into a single language.

Absence, returned considers the fragile space between disappearance and presence. It reflects on what has been removed, concealed or forgotten, while tracing the forms through which traces endure. A return is never a simple restoration; what comes back carries the memory of its absence.

In E/motion of a garment, Jacquemyn approaches clothing as a presence left behind after the body has departed. Coats, jackets, canvas pieces and textile structures hold the suggestion of a former inhabitant, suspended between departure and possible reappearance. Activated by air, movement, gravity and time, the garments remain responsive, occupying the space between object and living form.

De Brabander’s new installation Ancestral inferno emerges from histories of displaced and vanished cultural heritage. Conceived as a fictional lost altarpiece, the work unfolds through fragmented panels that evoke an image of something that was never fully present. The installation examines the ways images are erased, transformed and carried forward through collective memory.

Across both practices, absence becomes a material condition. Fabrics, fragments and remnants become carriers of memory, holding connections to what can no longer be fully recovered. The works do not seek to restore what has disappeared; they reveal how disappearance itself leaves a lasting imprint.

Presented within the context of Pride, Absence, returned reflects on identity as something continually shaped through attachment, longing, memory and transformation. It proposes identity as an evolving presence, formed through encounters with what remains and what has passed.