Félicien Umbreit

A graduate of the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre Horta (ULB) in 2013 and of the Master’s program in Ceramics at ENSAV La Cambre in 2021, he also holds a teaching qualification in visual arts. His trajectory lies at the crossroads of architecture, sculpture, and transmission, with particular attention to space, the body, and gesture.

His artistic practice is rooted in ceramics as a living material, drawn from the earth and transformed by fire. Through modeling, assemblage, and glaze work, he explores notions of transformation, movement, and metamorphosis. The forms he develops seek to render perceptible invisible forces, tensions, breaths, flows, within a poetic and sensitive approach attentive to the environment and its symbolic dimension.

At a time when symbolism, connections to the invisible, and spiritual and cultural traditions tend to fade in favor of the virtual and a certain desensitization of experience, his work aims to reactivate these links. He proposes suspended moments of pause through total installations integrating sculpture, space, and sound, enveloping the viewer in a singular immersive atmosphere.

Within the framework of this exhibition, Félicien Umbreit presents The Maelström and The Divine Breath, two works that question states of crisis, tipping points, and persistence. The Maelström, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s text, unfolds as a spiral of stoneware evoking chaos, descent, and recomposition. The Divine Breath, a censer-sculpture activated by smoke, invokes ritual, respiration, and a form of symbolic repair.

These works seek to envelop the viewer in suspended time, inviting them to feel, to slow down, and to question. They affirm the capacity of both material and human beings to preserve sensitive connections, to continue believing, and to inhabit the world with attentiveness.