26 february 2026, Emily Van Driessen
Body and landscape: exhibition & film screening by Jana Coorevits
At Fred&Ferry in Antwerp, the exhibition Luchtvlak Landschap zon, maan by visual artist Jana Coorevits takes place. In line with the reflective character of her practice, this exhibition takes place over a longer period, from 21 February until 25 April.
Through analogue colour and black-and-white photography, Coorevits slows down the gaze and creates images that leave space for complex, sometimes difficult-to-discuss experiences of the body. The analogue printing process reinforces that slow and intimate character of her images through the stillness that is inherent to analogue photography.
In the exhibition the relationship between the human and the non-human environment is central. By repeatedly looking, she investigates how celestial bodies, landscapes and her own body relate to one another. "The universal of the sun, the moon and the stars is connected to the intimate of one's own body, the direct matter with which we interact with the world," Coorevits says.
Jana Coorevits, grootste gemene deler, 2023, Fred&Ferry
During the exhibition period, on Friday 6 March you can also discover her film work at the nearby De Cinema (in De Studio) where her experimental short film Matter on its dance through time (2025) will be screened.
The film originated from a long-term dialogue with the desolate landscape of Death Valley (California), where Coorevits worked together with writer Charlotte Van den Broeck on the relationship between body and landscape. The visual language of the film searches for a way to make the fragility of the desert landscape and the body tangible
The film evening is curated and facilitated by Ursula, an Antwerp collective of women working in the audiovisual arts, of which Jana Coorevits is also a member. Prior to the screenings, musician and film scholar Kathy Vanhout and artist Alex Schuurbiers provide a short introduction.
In a short interview with Gallery Viewer, Jana Coorevits gives further insight into the exhibition and the film screening.
Jana Coorevits, 7:45, 18:30, 2026, Fred & Ferry
Is there a relationship between the exhibition and the short film?
Jana Coorevits:
"My artistic research is divided into two strands that inform each other. On the one hand, through my work I search for artistic strategies to deal with the representation and processing of sexual violence. How can we, through artistic practices, search for alternative forms of speaking and witnessing, forms that resist the linear logic of a juridical or confessional discourse that is driven by the word? Matter on its dance through time is a result of this research. The embodied experience of sexual violence cannot simply be retold as a coherent whole.
At the same time, in my practice I explore a second space in which there is no need to struggle, where silence, observation and bodily presence signify a form of rest as well as resistance. Luchtvlak Landschap zon, maan flows from this movement.
Repeatedly looking at the same subjects forms the basis of the methodology here. In order to connect with what surrounds me, I use the camera as an instrument to direct my attention. Cycles of observing, filming and photographing, writing, editing and beginning again.
I applied this method as well during the making of Matter on its dance through time: I looked at and filmed the landscape again and again, and through the practice of filmmaking built a relationship with the landscape."
Which sensitive layers do you try to take into account in order to arrive at a visually experimental and layered image language?
Jana Coorevits: "Something touches me when it unfolds, when something becomes visible that was always there, but that I had not noticed before. I consciously make choices regarding location, framing, the light sensitivity of the camera and analogue film or exposure time during printing. Although I have control over these choices, I have no influence on how reality responds to them. The unpredictabilities and coincidences that occur continuously co-determine the direction of the recording and the printing."
Jana Coorevits, Landschap → luchtvlak, 2026, Fred&Ferry, Antwerpen
Is there an experience, context or influence that has shaped who you are and how you work today?
Jana Coorevits:
The fact that I am a woman, and the societal position and social-emotional conditioning that come with that, deeply shape my being and therefore also my making. In addition, I have always read a great deal and with pleasure, and through literature I discovered how important it is for me to create space for observation and interiorisation, so that from there I can once again feel what I find essential to bring outward. Turning inward in order to then re-enter dialogue and communication from that place. I believe that this movement is visible in my process and in the artistic work that emerges from it. An endlessly repeating cycle: from outside to inside, back to outside, …
Estelle Zhong-Mengual writes in her book Leren Kijken: "what meanings unfold from my attention?" Both while making the exhibition and while making the film, I employed a dedicated form of attention as a method. Exercises in attention that, over time, enabled me to notice subtle shifts and nuances in light and matter, and to present them through film and photography as events in themselves."
The exhibition Luchtvlak Landschap zon, maan runs at Fred & Ferry in Antwerp until 25 April 2026. The screening of Matter on its dance through time takes place on Friday 6 March at 20:15 at De Cinema, Maarschalk Gérardstraat 4, 2000 Antwerp.
