Elise El Yousfi's presentation marks the culmination of her five-month residency at M. During her residency, she continued to develop a visual practice situated at the intersection of sculpture and poetry. Raised within a Moroccan and French cultural background, El Yousfi’s work explores questions of diaspora, identity, and the experience of growing up.
Elise El Yousfi
Elise El Yousfi
Elise El Yousfi (b. 2001, France) lives and works in Antwerp. In 2024, she completed her master’s degree in Fine Art (Sculpture) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.
Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Publiek Park (Brussels & Meise), Kunsthal Mechelen, Backspace Antwerp, and The Oracle Gallery, in collaboration with De Studio for Antwerp Art Weekend 2025.
El Yousfi works with steel, ceramics, organic materials, lace, and text. Her materials carry memories within them: ash made from orange blossom and date palm from Morocco is incorporated into the glaze of her ceramic sculptures. Lace holds the traces of generations of women within her family history. Baby powder evokes the softness and sense of security associated with childhood. Playgrounds and toys also return as recurring motifs: places and objects of comfort, discovery, and play. Through these elements, El Yousfi intertwines personal experiences and melancholy with broader questions of cultural belonging, loss, and transmission.
For her, writing is, like sculpting, a way of thinking and feeling. A central element in her practice is her relationship to Darija, Moroccan Arabic, a language she does not fully master but which continues to shape her imagination.
In this presentation, Elise El Yousfi presents the outcome of her residency. The new sculptures and installations invite visitors to reflect on how memories settle into materials and what it means to grow up while the past persistently returns — unresolved and insistent.
This residency is a collaboration with Moussem, a Brussels-based arts centre dedicated to the development, production and presentation of visual and performing arts. Moussem and M are expanding their residency programme by organizing exchanges between the two residency locations (Brussels and Leuven).
Every two years, M and Moussem jointly select an artist for a residency in Leuven. In addition, the two organizations select a Leuven-based artist for a residency at Moussem. The aim of the exchange is to embed the artists’ creative practices within a new urban context, as well as to expand their professional networks.
The collaboration will take place for the second time in 2026. Elise El Yousfi is the new M-resident, whilst Aya Koné, who lives and works in Leuven, is making the reverse move and will take up a residency at Moussem.
M-residency
M supports emerging talent and, through residency work, gives artists the opportunity and space to deepen their artistic research and develop new work. Every year, two artists are selected for the M-residency, who are guests at the M-atelier in Cas-co for five months. They follow an intensive trajectory with substantive, financial and technical guidance, culminating in a presentation in M.
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