"In this whole pandemic situation, we had to find other ways to communicatie with our loved ones. So why not fall back on some good old fashioned postcards? And while you’re at it, get inspired by the mail art movement! The mail art movement was influenced by the Fluxus movement, back in the 1960’s. Mail art was centered around communication, sending small artworks through the mail to people within the artists’ network. The works themselves are not the point though. What truly matters is the process of exchanging art.

For our current archive presentation, M HKA dug through some existing mail art archives. Thanks to the ICC archive, Jan van Veen archive, the legacy of Jef Lambrechts and the recent donation of the Bex-De Deyne family, we were able to put together a selection of works. On view are a collection of letters, postcards, posters and collages by various artists, all of which were inspired and influenced by the mail art movement.

As an extension to this presentation, we put together the In Vitro project. A project where seventeen artists were invited to create a work of art on an A2 sheet of paper. These artworks were then made into an edition of 100 copies and sent to M HKA’s national mailing list. The original works of these seventeen artists are also on display in our archive presentation."

Work by Nel Aerts

ARCHIVE PRESENTATION: MAIL ART & IN VITRO, currently on view at M HKA until January 10th 2021!