Laurence Vielle is a French-speaking poet and actor from Belgium who has been awarded many prizes including the Grand Prix of the Académie Charles Cros and the Prix des Découvreurs. She runs writing workshops and creates performances based on her detailed transcription of others’ words.  

‘I’ve lived in Brussels since 1968. As a poet and actor, I write and I speak the written word, both mine and those of others. Yes, I love to speak. It keeps me going. Words travel through me and I travel through them. To talk of the world, to the world … A dance.’

During her residency at the Chartreuse de Neuville in August 2019, she worked with the company Lunatic to complete the writing of her collaborative project ‘De ses mains’. The text was conceived with the collaboration of Simone Prouvé, a tapestry weaver and abstract artist born in 1931, who wanted to bring the ancient craft of weaving into the industrial age with new materials (steel wire, copper, fibreglass and polythene) and incorporating a poetic aspect, making it at once graphic and architectural. An initial collaboration resulted in ‘Fileuse’, which was shown at the Chartreuse de Neuville in July 2017.

The two artists’ new project, ‘De ses mains’, comes from reflections on pictorial space and a poetic reverie on the archetypal figure of the Fates. It will be a poetic and woven portrait by three female artists from three generations – a young harpist and an elderly weaver. A poet-reader and an artist. Each practise their own type of weaving, at the crossroads of craft, the arts, design and architecture.

As well as the completion of her project ‘De ses mains’, Laurence Vielle used her time at the Chartreuse to begin a new work, ‘Gratitude’, by looking for the traces of the several thousand Belgians (civilians, soldiers, medics) housed in the Chartreuse during the First World War.