Lieven De Boeck's work can be seen as a research about language and space, going from literature, art, architecture and urbanism to the different strategies of organizing, distributing and handling information. He researches how context defines meaning, how strategies construct that context, and how spaces are appropriated in the process. De Boeck aims to go beyond that fixed definition and to find new paths of reading within the given structures.
In Lieven De Boeck's recent artistic practice he explores the heteronormative attitudes that dominate the current artworld and presents alternative ways to exhibit and
experience art. As a queer individual Lieven learned from a young age in becoming unnoticed as a survival strategy when confronted with gender expectations, while at the same time experiencing the limited spaces for queerness society offers. The association between gender and the form in which art appears is tested by using queerness to probe social norms in our neoliberal society.
Lieven's PhD research, 'The Archives of Disappearance, a Field Guide to Getting Lost', is based on the premises that our understanding of art is dominated by rationality, leaving out the emotional. Inspired by the thinking of the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, Lieven adopts the view that art can be experienced through emotional resonance by transcending its physical form. Lieven De Boeck appropriates Oiticica's concepts in a queer way, challenging conventional notions of authorship or cultural appropriation. Through critical reflections on the limitations of heteronormative spaces, Lieven questions the role of art in allowing queerness challenging societal norms.
"What if queerness could be a model for another art world, challenging the status quo, inviting viewers to reimagine and embrace the transformative potential embedded in queerness?"
Lieven De Boeck had solo exhibitions at the Frac Paca, Marseilles (France), the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens and Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp (Belgium), Kunstraum München (Germany), LMAK projects, New York (USA), as well as at the Fonderie Darling in Montreal (Canada). In 2017 the first monography of the artist was published.
