Àmare – The Art of Care, De Blauwe Zaal and Sint-Janshospitaal, Damme, Belgium, 1 August – 27 September 2026

Caring is never self-evident. It asks for attention, patience, and the choice to preserve what is valuable and protect what is fragile. What if we saw care not as duty but as a way of engaging consciously with the world?

Àmare is an art trail in and around Damme that connects contemporary art with landscape, heritage and experience. Founded in 2023 by entrepreneur Luc Beke and curator Annelies Ysebaert, it grows from 2026 into a biennial. The third edition, The Art of Care, unfolds across two historic indoor locations, De Blauwe Zaal and the thirteenth-century Sint-Janshospitaal, with a series of open-air works along the route between them. The exhibition explores care in four directions: for nature, for heritage, for others and for ourselves. Among the artists are names such as Jan Fabre, Wim Delvoye, Kris Martin, Arne Quinze, Nick Ervinck and Koen Vanmechelen.

Koen Vanmechelen (°1965) is an artist whose work moves at the crossroads of art, science and community, driven by questions of identity, diversity and our shared future as animals on this planet. His recent exhibition We Thought We Were Alone in Venice stages this as an explosion of hybridity, across countless forms and species. The chicken, which he has crossbred since his Cosmopolitan Chicken Project into a carrier of genetic and cultural diversity, is one figure among many there, an entry point into a far larger inquiry into how we live together and how we change.

In Damme he shows The Walking Egg, a marble egg on chicken legs with a golden ring, a work that previously stood in Knokke. This egg does not stand still. It walks, searching for the right place and the right temperature to hatch. The title also points to the non-profit Vanmechelen founded in 2010 with fertility specialist Willem Ombelet, an initiative at the meeting point of art and science that campaigns for accessible fertility care. The question the egg carries reaches beyond the human. It concerns the survival of the species that share this planet, the care needed for something to hatch after us. Here care is not preservation but bringing forth. The egg carries the origin of life out into the world, in search of ground to take root.

In the Sint-Janshospitaal, where Augustinian sisters tended the sick for centuries, the walking egg takes on a second meaning. The care once given here at the end of a life returns, in Vanmechelen's work, to its beginning.

EXHIBITION FACTS

Àmare – The Art of Care

De Blauwe Zaal and Sint-Janshospitaal, Damme

1 August – 27 September 2026

Open Wednesday to Sunday, 12 to 6 p.m. Adults €10, ages 12–22 €8, under 12 free. Starts at De Blauwe Zaal; boat with De Lamme Goedzak along the Damse Vaart to Damme.

More info: www.amare.be