About
CV
Publications
40 Woorden / 40 Words
In the group exhibition “40 Words,” artists Lies Jacobs, Paule Buschop, and Milou Abel drew inspiration from artist Louwrien Wijers. In her 1970–1971 work “40 Words,” Wijers selected various words and gave herself time to experience them fully, free from judgment, until they became internalized within her. She made prints of the words and focused her attention on one word at a time for an extended period, hoping thereby to penetrate “the core within herself.”
In an effort to discover what connects us as artists, Paule Buschop, Lies Jacobs, and I set out to find 40 words that resonate with all three of us—words through which, like Wijers, we can internalize our experiences and transform a shared language into poetic matter. Will the words connect the artworks, or will everything fall apart into different interpretations of the language? Which words will linger, and what will be suppressed? The attempt at rapprochement—the creative process—began in the spring of 2025 and will be on view starting March 20, 2026, at Arttelex.
In the exhibition, I sought out histories of care. By observing society and through my experiences in my role as a caregiver, I gained a deeper understanding. The 40 words revealed to me the reciprocity between the senses and language, particularly hearing and smell—the two senses we use first in human life and which highlight language’s inability to encompass everything. Because of their directness, they can evoke memories and stir emotions beyond words. In this exhibition, I share sensory experiences I had during the night at the care facility where I work. The art installation includes a collection of flutes, homemade scents, a harmony of breaths, and a photo series. As part of my creative process at I SOLISTI MakerSpace, there were five musical performances in collaboration with flutist and music artist Nathalie van Meirvenne.
Huidparfum, broekspijp links / Skinfragrance, left trouser leg
Greet vertelde me met innemende theatraliteit over haar angst voor water. Ze sprak over haar gehandicapte kinderen, over het seksueel misbruik en over haar gevoel soms een egel te zijn. Toen ze in oktober overleed en ik haar kleren kreeg, wilde ik geen afscheid nemen van haar geur. Het rook naar wasmiddel en ongewaterde huid. Ik heb haar kleding aan stukken moeten knippen om ze in het laboratorium te destilleren.
Om van haar kledinggeur een huidparfum te maken.
/
Greet told me with engaging theatricality about her fear of water. She spoke of her disabled children, of the sexual abuse and of her feeling of being a hedgehog at times. When she died last October and I was given her clothes, I did not want to be separated from her smell. The smell of detergent and unwatered skin. I had to cut her clothes in pieces to distil it in the laboratory.
To turn the smell of her clothes into a perfume.
Myriam, artist, my dear friend, March 2018
Part of a collection of 16 mm films shown at Argos in Brussels
TRAJECT M HKA × kunsthuis Yellow Art 2026
Through my work in art studios within the healthcare sector, I meet artists who work in their own visual language, but for whom the path to the professional art world is not straightforward. Their work often takes shape within the privacy of the studio, in an environment where care and artistic practice are constantly intertwined. I think it’s important, and I wonder what happens when we occasionally leave that environment together. When it’s not someone’s vulnerability, but their artistry that serves as the starting point for an encounter.
With that in mind, I developed the TRAJECT initiative together with Lies Jacobs (kunsthuis Yellow Art) in collaboration with M HKA in Antwerp.
Between June and September 2026, nine artists affiliated with various art studios within the healthcare sector in the province of Antwerp gathered at the museum five times. We explored the collection, visited the depot, and engaged in conversations with artists Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Vaast Colson, and Liesbeth Grupping. We talked about creating art, developing our own artistic practices, and the possibilities for showcasing our work. During the workshop sessions, there was an opportunity to show our work, view each other’s pieces and reflect on how we experience our own artistic practices.
What interests me in this process is the significance of the environment in which art is created and viewed. The museum provided a place where artists from different studios could meet, outside the context of healthcare. The museum offers a different perspective, not because the work itself changes there, but because the way it is viewed and engaged with can shift. This had an impact on the interactions among participating artists.
For me, TRAJECT is an exploration of the space between two worlds that do not naturally intersect. I see it as journey of what can emerge when existing roles temporarily fade into the background and artists connect with one another through their work.
https://www.muhka.be/en/a-guidance-trajectory-for-artists-i-m-hka-x-kunsthuis-yellow-art/
Marleen and me, December 2018, Brussels
Makerspace
Following the open call by I SOLISTI, I had the honour of taking part in their MakerSpace, a talent development programme run by the wind ensemble. This programme focuses on experimentation, interdisciplinary exchange and engagement with wind instruments. I am being mentored by Lise Bruyneel and Frederik Neyrinck, amongst others.
I began this project by asking where and how hearing and smell – the act of smelling and the act of blowing – intersect. They share a fleeting quality; they enter the body, evoke memories and feelings, and then disappear again, without the need for words. Hearing and smell are the first senses we experience as babies and the last to remain with us before we die.
By recording breathing sounds, making my own whistles, and composing scents that correspond to specific sounds, I explore how these different sensory experiences can complement one another. This gave rise to the idea of creating a performance centered on nighttime in a care facility. Based on my own experience working at night, the sense of closeness you can feel while walking down a hallway full of sleeping and snoring people is deeply moving.
The performance is scheduled for 2028. I am collaborating with composer Ellen Jacobs and flutist Nathalie Van Meirvenne.
Ruikt u maar
Geen woorden worden gewisseld, ik drapeer een deken over de man en wring het links en rechts onder zijn lichaam. Hij is nu bedekt onder lagen stof vol huidgeuren. Nog één? Nog één. Het lampje blijft aan en hij blijft naar mij kijken als ik de kamer verlaat. Ik zie hoe de dekens en kleren en geuren als moederarmen zijn lichaam beschermen. Een bloot lichaam, uitvergroot door de nacht, vastgehouden door zijn huidparfum.
Smell please
No words are exchanged, I drape a blanket over the man and wrap it left and right under his body. Another? Another. The light stays on and he keeps looking at me as I leave the room. I see how the blankets and clothes and scents protect his body like mother's arms. A naked body, magnified by the night, held by the scent of his skin.
BANG / Afraid
The tiles on the walls. Tiles like those of a slaughterhouse, of a butcher's shop, of a shower, of a bathroom. In my work as a caregiver, I help wash people every day. Through its context, the exhibition BANG in a former slaughterhouse in Antwerp shines a different light on an occupation that, at first glance, seems so mundane. Disembodied and dislocated. Fearful.
BANG is a collaborative project in which an international and interdisciplinary group of visual artists introduce the public to their fears, both rational and irrational. →
Photo Book: I Am You
I used to watch her walk by every day from the window of my dorm room. It’s been 15 years today. She wore beautiful retro clothes. Her hair was bleached white, just like the singer Blondie. She wore something different every day. At that stage in my life, I was also into clothes and trying to find my own style. The way she moved her body and hummed as she walked by—she drew me in.
One day I asked her if I could take her photograph, and she replied: ‘I used to be a model too’. That’s how a friendship began. I got to know her, through all her different dresses. Through the old photographs and the ones I took of her. And as time went by, I also came to know the voices in her head. The most prominent was that of a young woman who was shouting at her: ‘I am you, I am you, I am you’…
Even now, all these years later, I still have a few of her dresses in a box on top of the wardrobe, still carrying the scent of her cigarettes and coffee. Next to them is a small stack of photo book made from my photos of her.
If you’d like to see the photo album, take a look here →.
If you’re interested in buying a copy, please send me an email.
Vier keer dood
When I saw them hanging, in the attic of a mental institution, I hesitated. The beige old linen transported me to the 1950s. The strings indicated that knots could be tied in them. Someone or myself could be tied into it. Around the belly or around the neck or around the feet. I took the four objects home, where I repaired and reshaped them.
Paule Buschop created a performance in which she was guided by the shape of the objects. She incorporated her experience of being fixated and isolated in a psychiatric environment into her dance. From feet in the air out of boredom to spinning freely in the restraining object.
A scent was added to the objects and the performance through a self-created scent composition. The perfume is a combination of a dusty, damp, mossy scent of old textiles and dark attic combined with a classic chypre base that takes inspiration from post-war women's perfumes.
House of Compassion
House of Compassion in Brussels is a community center dedicated to compassion and the fight for justice. It focuses on four themes: discrimination, inequality and poverty, the environment, and refugees. In September and October 2022, there was a special project addressing discrimination and injustice resulting from mental health vulnerabilities. KAOS vzw organized the artistic program.
They invited me to their exhibition, for which I created an installation featuring photographs and objects. The way the light fell in the church, combined with the transparency and tactility of the images, brought to the surface symbols of our daily care for one another. →
Exhibition Archive
As part of the social artistic workshop ‘Den 138’, we jointly created an exhibition at gallery ArtTelex that showcased art by all participating artists.
November 2022
Work by Bjorn
Juni 2022: A modest public presentation of small works made in the Joossensgang. Click for more photo's
Bloedtest, Guislain museum, Ghent
Forgot to swallow folic acid A multimedia installation by Milou Abel, Monicque Smallegange van der Zee and Ted Oonk exhibited at Museum Dr. Guislain, summer 2019.
In 2018, the artists Milou, Monicque, and Ted began an exchange of letters. Together, they form a triangular relationship in which they write to one another. Drawing from their different stages of life, they discuss themes such as the Nip-test, motherhood, being different, caring for others, and everyday life. The letters gave rise to independent works of art, which are interwoven with the content of the correspondence.
Book : Zorg/care Made for the project : Forgot to swallow folic acid Edtion of 10
Photographic installation that could be viewed day and night like a diorama through the windows of a vacant building in Ghent. Kunstencentrum Croxhapox, September 2019
Marleen, Willy, Patricia, Amelie, Jozef & Thomas, LHGWR, The Hague
Works by Milou Abel, Kolder artist-run-space, Ghent
Perfect people have no stories, Muntpunt, Brussels
Works created about and in collaboration with Peter, Helma, and Els during the “Het vijfde seizoen” residency in Den Dolder. The works were exhibited during the 2015 Utrechtdownunder exhibition at the former Wolvenplein prison.
Undercover, museum of contemporary art Erarta Saint-petersburg
I am not doing anything until I feel the need, de nederlandsche bank, Amsterdam
Small universe - the dutch need to document, Les Rencontres d'Arles
https://www.rencontres-arles.com/en/artistes/milou-abel
I am you / Jestem toba, ZPAF gallery, Krakow photomonth festival
Ik ben jou
Prospects & concepts, 2014, Art Rotterdam
Prospects & concepts, 2014, Art Rotterdam
All the things you are, academiegalerie Utrecht
Mijn kunstenaarspraktijk is onlosmakelijk verbonden met mijn werk in de zorgsector. In dat werk overvalt mij regelmatig een gevoel dat ik niet kan thuisbrengen. Elementair is de ervaring met de mensen en de ruimtes waarin zij leven. Die bevindt zich buiten de heersende norm en snelheid van de maatschappij. Het gevoel brengt mij bij een ongrijpbare geschiedenis, een melancholische vreemdheid.
Het zit hem in de objecten die ik tegenkom, een bidstoel in de hoek, de kleding die ik opvouw, een hoepelrok, de mensen die ik help met wassen, de geur van de huid.
Ik doe onderzoek door te lezen, te schrijven, te fotograferen en objecten mee naar huis te nemen. Maar hoe hard ik ook zoek, uiteindelijk blijft het voelen als een web van onnavolgbare betekeniswerelden en vergankelijke draden. De objecten, de foto’s van mensen en de geuren die ik naar tentoonstellingsruimtes breng, proberen kijkers te laten tasten naar de onvatbare vreemdheid. Ontdaan van spektakel en dramatisering blijft in die ervaring enkel een zachte kern van melancholie over.
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My artistic practice is inextricably linked to my work in the healthcare sector. In that work, a feeling regularly overwhelms me that I cannot bring home. The experience with people and the spaces they live in is essential. This is outside the prevailing norm and pace of society. The feeling brings me to an elusive history, a melancholic strangeness.
It is in the objects I encounter, a prayer chair in the corner, the clothes I fold, a hoop skirt, the people I help wash, the smell of skin.
I do research by reading, writing, photographing and taking objects home. But no matter how hard I search, in the end it still feels like a web of unparalleled meanings and fragile threads. The objects, photographs of people and smells I bring to exhibition spaces try to make viewers sense the ungraspable strangeness. Stripped of spectacle and dramatisation, only a soft core of melancholy remains in that experience.
Milou Abel (1990) lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.
milouabel@gmail.com
Curriculum Vitae
Residencies
‘Kaos’ Brussels, autumn 2015
'Het vijfde seizoen' Den Dolder, autumn 2012
Solo exhibitions
2018 3X7, Croxhapox, Ghent
2018 Marleen, Willy, Patricia, Amelie, Jozef & Thomas, LHGWR, The Hague
2017 works by Milou Abel, Kolder artist-run-space, Ghent
2013 I am you / Jestem toba, ZPAF gallery, krakow photomonth festival
Group Exhibitions
2026 40 woorden, Arttelex Antwerpen
2024, Excited, PXL Mad Hasselt
2024, Exit - CCHA / Cultuurcentrum Hasselt
2023, Brokkeljon, CC Zwaneberg, Heist-op-den-Berg
2022 Atelier Den 138, Arttelex, Antwerp
2022 More art, less prejudice, HOC, Brussels
2022 Project studio Joossensgang, Antwerp
2021 Photobooks art page by page, Grassi museum for angewandte kunst, Leipzig
2021 BANG, Exhibition slaughterhouse site, Antwerp
2021 Photobook art page by page, Grassi museum of applied art, Kassel
2021 Bang Expo, former slaughterhouse, Antwerp
2019 Bloedtest, Guislain museum, Ghent
2018 School is out for summer, Argos, Brussels
2018 Sa capo al fine, Netwerk Aalst, Aalst
2017 screening at art cinema Offoff, Ghent
2017 Unseen dummy award at Belfast photo festival, Belfast
2016 Unseen photo fair, dummy award, Amsterdam
2016 Perfect people have no stories, Muntpunt, Brussels
2016 KAOS / het vijfde seizoen, Kaaitheather, Brussels
2015 Unseen photo fair, dummy award, Amsterdam
2015 Onder controle, former prison wolvenplein, Utrecht
2014 I am not doing anything until i feel the need, OBA, msterdam
2014 Small universe 02 - the dutch need to document, museum 104, Paris
2014 I am not doing anything until I feel the need, de nederlandsche bank, Amsterdam
2014 Dutch photobooks at TIFF festival, Studio BWA Wroclaw
2014 Small universe - the dutch need to document, Les Rencontres d'Arles
2014 Plat(t)form, fotomuseum Winterthur
2014 Prospects & concepts, mondriaanfonds Art Rotterdam
2013 Tijdelijk (z)onder dak, stadhuis Utrecht
2013 Undercover, museum of contemporary art Erarta Saint-petersburg
2013 Vrai ou faux?, Fotomuseum Rotterdam
2013 Fotoaplauso, nao street Madrid
2012 Verzamelplaats, verhalen uit het utrechtse landschap, Flatland gallery Utrecht
2012 Confetti generation, polly's picture show vondelparkpaviljoen Amsterdam
2012 Belofte nummer 7, kunstliefde, Utrecht
2012 Dutch Doc award 2012, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam
2012 Photobook festival, le Bal, Paris
2012 Slideluck potshow, pakhuis de zwijger Amsterdam
2011 Vrai ou faux? project ventilazione, Wenen
2011 All the things you are, academiegalerie Utrecht
2011 Vrai ou faux?’, raum linksrechts Hamburg
2011 Graduation exhibition hogeschool voor de kunsten Utrecht
2011 Photobook festival, documenta-halle kassel
Projects
2026-Initiator of Het Traject, a gathering of artists from different (care) contexts at M HKA, Antwerp.
2026 - ongoing MAKERSPACE ISOLISTI
2025- Art facilitator for the Bach con Brio project via De Veerman, Antwerp.
https://www.veerman.be/blog/bach-con-brio-in-aantocht/
2020- 2025 studio supervisor in atelier 'Den 138' at Albe vwz
https://www.instagram.com/atelier_den_138/?hl=en
2022-2023 Teacher for photography project "Come together" at CC Zwaneberg
2019 - 2023 Guest lecture given for the subject 'Art & Society' at LUCA in Ghent.
2021 Organizer of the exhibition BANG in an empty slaughterhouse in Antwerp.
https://www.instagram.com/bang.expo/?hl=en
2017-2019 Artist on the social artistic project "Bloodtest. This was a collaboration between Museum Dr. Guislain & wit.h vzw.
https://www.bloedtest.org/nl/artiesten/
2016-2018 Organizer and founder of the artist-run-space Kolder in Ghent. https://www.instagram.com/kolder_ghent/
2014 Talk at plat(t)form, fotomuseum winterthur
2013 Collectief art project for yough adults, the cube, Sliedrecht
Prices
2016 Shortlist Unseen dummy award
2015 Shortlist Unseen dummy award
2013 Longlist Deutsche Borse Photography prize
2012 Shortlist Dutch Doc award
2011 1st price, Dummy award photobook festival in Kassel
2011 Longlist, Piet bakker prijs
Education
2023-2024
Open Lab, PXL Mad Hasselt
2023-2024
Internship Parfumeur Francesca Bianchi
2020 - 2021
Master of arts in gender and diversity, Ghent university
2016-2018
Masters in fine art (cum laude), Luca school of arts Ghent
2007-2011
Bachelor photography (summa cum laude), Hogeschool voor de kunsten Utrecht.
2010 Masterclass 'vrai ou faux?’ project, Atelier reflexe, Paris
2006- 2007 Preparation course, fine art & design, Hogeschool voor de kunsten Utrecht
Grants
2017-2018 scholarship, Prins Bernard cultuur fonds.
2012 startstipendium, Mondriaan fonds
Publications
2022 Exhibition catalogue: 'Photobook, art page by page'. The GRASSIE museum for applied art Leipzig.
2019 text about my art written by Bert Vandenbussche featerd in online magaizne 'bloedtest'
2019 ‘Bloedtest’ w.ith vzw & guislian museum Gent
2018 'Outsiders art is out' rekto:verso https://www.rektoverso.be/artikel/outsider-art-is-out
2015 ‘Perfect people have no stories’ KAOS
2014 Les Rencontres d'Arles 2014 festival catalogues
2014 Prospects & concepts , mondriaan fonds toont talent
2013 Text about 'Ik ben jou' written by Stefan Lorenzutti for the Krakow photomonth festival
2013 Krakow photomonth festival 2013 catalogues
2012 'De nacht ruikt anders' Kunstliefde Utrecht
2011 European photography magazine, no. 89, german/english
2011 'Morgen, vandaag, gisteren' HKU graduation catalogue
2011 'Many layered stories' HKU photography catalogue
