Festival of Flanders Kempen

Exhibition

Emilie Lauwers

The Nine Worlds of Musica Divina in Images

Immerse yourself in the visual imagination of Musica Divina, the autumn festival of Festival van Vlaanderen Kempen that brings heavenly and healing music each year to the religious heritage sites of the Kempen region. Since 2017, artist Emilie Lauwers has been crafting wondrous worlds using nothing more than paper, fabric, tape, and thread. In the darkness of her studio, under the spotlight, these miniature universes come to life — they turn, they sing, they breathe magic.

Experience the Musica Divina universe. In this unique exhibition, you’ll discover the original models and materials used for the installations that help visually shape the festival’s atmosphere. Nine worlds filled with poetry, simplicity, and light — now exhibited together for the very first time.

Emilie Lauwers

In the work of Emilie Lauwers (b. 1984), form follows function. She sees the designer as a translator, someone who intuitively – yet with strong structure – seeks the right visual language for any given content. Since 2017, Emilie has been the resident designer for Festival van Vlaanderen Mechelen/Kempen, where she creates all campaigns for the Lunalia and Musica Divina festivals under the artistic direction of Jelle Dierickx.

Early in her career, Emilie illustrated children's books for publishers such as Die Keure, De Eenhoorn, The House of Books, Hardscore, and Van Halewyck, learning her craft through trial and error. Since then, she illustrated Le Bestiaire by Apollinaire for the Roeland Hendrickx Ensemble and created a series of large charcoal drawings for Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. Her personal work – etchings and drawings – has been shown in various solo exhibitions and in the book Sketchbook, which she self-published in 2019.

In 2022, she illustrated the book Verdwijntijd, which tells the story of Sofie Vanden Eynde’s experience with burnout. She also designed the layout of Jelle Dierickx’s book OPUS. Emilie’s most recent publication, released in September 2024 by Borgerhoff & Lamberigts on behalf of Matrix [Centre for New Music], is Hoofd vol Klanken, written by Annemarie Peeters and enriched with over 200 digital illustrations.

Since 2022, she has been creating video scenography for the ensemble Vox Luminis — including Purcell’s The Fairy Queen and Cavalieri’s Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo in collaboration with Mario Melo Costa — both performed across Europe. For Klarafestival, she designed an installation on cellist Benjamin Glorieux’s walking project Weg van Bach, which was shown at BOZAR and Concertgebouw Brugge, among others, in collaboration with David Carney.

Emilie has designed sets and costumes for opera productions both in Belgium and abroad. She has worked multiple times with directors Vincent van den Elshout and Benoît Deleersnyder, and has collaborated on productions with I Solisti and composer Howard Moody. In 2019, she created the scenography for Princesse Arabe at L’Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg. For De Munt/La Monnaie in Brussels, she was responsible for set design, costumes, and video for Push (2019) and Solar (2023).

She also works with theatre collective Broder, for whom she created Testerep (2022) and Moresnet (2025). In addition to her creative work, Emilie conducts workshops and coaching sessions for children, youth, and adults, commissioned by cultural and community centres both in Belgium and internationally. Since 2020, she has been teaching in the animation film department at RITCS in Brussels.

16.09.2025 — 25.10.2025
18:00 — 14:00

Geel Library
Werft 30
2440 Geel