The thread is fragile, but it resists.
It is through this thread that Juliette Vanwaterloo opens her universe — one where fragility transforms into political strength. She anchors her gesture in a dual necessity: to reveal the violence of our world and to invent new narratives through material.
Drawing from current images, often sourced from social media, she creates tapestries and embroideries where anger becomes thread, and thread becomes struggle. Hand embroidery, bobbin lace, tufting, and other textile techniques — traditionally associated with the domestic sphere — become, for Juliette Vanwaterloo, a response to erasure. She diverts textile practices to make them witnesses of the fractures of our time, but also tools of intersectional resistance.
Each stitch marks our collective history, each surface becomes a site for restoring a counter-narrative. Her works — whether monumental tapestries or more intimate embroideries — combine the patience of the gesture with the urgency of the present. In uncompromising compositions, they poetically and precisely archive state violence, oppression, injustice, and the failure of obsolete social and political structures.
Text by Kyliana Hamour, committed art dealer
After obtaining a Diplôme National des Arts with a specialization in textile techniques in 2019 from the École d’Art et de Design d’Angers (FR), she continued her love for fiber arts with a master’s degree in Tapestry/Textile Arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, graduating with distinction in 2021. Since then, she has received numerous awards: the Prize of the Minister of Higher Education of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles at the BeCraft Prix Tremplin (2021), First Prize at the Prix Artistique de la Ville de Tournai (2023), First Prize in the ArtContest competition (2023), and the BPS22 Prize at the Prix Médiatine (2023). The latter led to her first solo exhibition, Tout Cramer, curated by Dorothée Duvivier at BPS22 (2024). Her work is also featured in numerous group exhibitions across France and Belgium.
