Elise El Yousfi’s m-residency

Elise El Yousfi will be spending five months at Cas-co as part of the M-residency programme. El Yousfi’s practice operates at the intersection of sculpture and poetry. Through writing and drawing, she transforms text into sculptures in which memory, identity and questions of coming of age are interwoven.

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.

@elise_ely

Through sculpture, El Yousfi has found a way to further explore her Moroccan and French roots and her dual identity. Using steel, ceramics, organic materials and lace, she constructs immersive structures that invite viewers into a visual world both intimately and universally resonant. In her work, she reflects on what it means to grow up while the past persistently returns, unresolved and insistent.

‘Only Tears and Baby Powder, Sculpting in a Foreign Language’, Elise El Yousfi, MFA Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, 2024, © Charlotte Daniëlse

Her oeuvre is characterized by a recurring use of the colour white, as a reference to the fragile space between memory and adulthood. The playground also recurs as a motif as sites of solace, exploration, and play.

During her residency, El Yousfi aims to transform the studio into an open, tranquil space for encounter. She invites visitors to engage in conversation and shared reflection, and uses dialogue as an extension of her material research. Through this exchange, she deepens her exploration of ‘whiteness’ across a variety of mediums, seeking forms in which melancholy, self-reflection and cultural connection converge.

‘Wind Regards, Blind Regards’, Elise El Yousfi, Publiek Park, Botanique & Meise, 2025, © Michiel De Cleene

‘Slide Shoe’, Elise El Yousfi, Walk a Mile in my Shoes in The Oracle Gallery, 2025, © Lina Van Hulle

'Muted Language if Gardens’, Elise El Yousfi — 'Muted Language if Gardens’, Publiek Park, Botanique, Elise El Yousfi, 2025, © Anna Laganovska

Collaboration with Moussem

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.