The city of Antwerp is proud to present Blinds, the artwork by Martin Margiela

The city of Antwerp is proud to present Blinds, the first artwork for public space by artist and former fashion designer Martin Margiela. ​

Martin Margiela (1957, lives and works in Belgium and France) was asked to create an artwork for the refurbished Schuttershofstraat, an important shopping street in the centre of Antwerp. The many shop windows, the strolling (seeing and being seen), shine and seduction, as well as metropolitan dynamism, roughness and unpredictability: all these elements form the context of Blinds, Margiela's first monumental outdoor sculpture.

Stillness and dynamism

An object we associate with privacy - the slat curtain behind which we hide, away from the gaze of others - is set up en plein public. What exactly is hidden from view here, however, remains a mystery. Margiela plays a game with the passer-by who is free to imagine what is hidden. Whoever tries to look ‘behind the curtain’ by walking around the sculpture always ends up back at square one. The silvery slats hang motionlessly still, while the bustle of the city rushes by. The artwork appears as a mirage, a perpetual dreamscape, a nod to Belgian surrealism that is a great inspiration for Margiela. As René Magritte said: ‘Every thing we see hides another, we always desire to see what is hidden by what is visible.’

Blinds captures the feeling that something is hidden but can be revealed at any moment. The artist reduces this moment to its essence, captures it in a form, and materialises this form as strikingly and sustainably as possible. It feels like something is about to happen, but the artwork stands still.

The city as a place of wonder

The city and its public space have long been an important source of inspiration for Margiela, who headed the pioneering fashion house Maison Martin Margiela from 1988 to 2008. In previous visual work, the artist borrowed seemingly banal objects from the urban environment that he transformed in a surreal way, such as a traffic cone covered in fur. With Blinds, Margiela now makes the opposite move: he introduces a slat curtain - an everyday domestic object - into public space. What remains, however, is the sense of wonder and amazement. ​ ​

Blinds shares with Margiela's previous work, as a fashion designer and as a visual artist, a great sensitivity to materials and processes of impermanence. Traces of time or touch are not hidden or undone but are at the core of the chosen execution. Blinds is made of stainless steel, an industrial material, but was sanded to mimic the texture of textiles, and was finally plated with palladium.

Blinds will be part of the Antwerp Public Art Collection.

Project credits

Commissioner: City of Antwerp ​ ​
​Curator: Samuel Saelemakers, Antwerp Public Art Collection - Middelheim Museum
​Production: Art Casting, Oudenaarde

Header image: Martin Margiela, Blinds, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Antwerp Public Art Collection. Photo: Tom Cornille