ICA Belgium's Walk & Talk / Meet & Learn with Heleen Sintobin
22 June 2025: A guided tour of the exhibition Colour - Seeing beyond pigment, in Hasselt, Belgium
On Sunday, 22nd of June ICA-Belgium organized a Walk & Talk / Meet & Learn with Heleen Sintobin, a researcher and designer. She was our guide through the exhibition Colour. Seeing beyond pigment, at Z33 - House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture in Hasselt, Belgium.
Watch the video report of the guided tour.
Heleen Sintobin has a background in interior architecture and holds a Master’s degree in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London. In her current practice, she explores the future of craft in the digital age.
As a resident of the InterActions research group at LUCA School of Arts, she experiments with mine tailings and 3D printing techniques. Heleen also works as an artistic researcher at Laboratorium, the biolab for art, design, and biotechnology at KASK & Conservatorium.
There, she collaborates with scientist Maria Boto on Ecology of Colour, an interdisciplinary project focused on the future of sustainable colour production.
About the exhibition:
Traditional chemical pigments, once the pinnacle of innovation, have given way to a second generation: bio-based pigments, made from natural ingredients. But at a time of increasing climate and ecological challenges, this approach too appears to have its limits. Structural colours, based on optical refraction of light, are a pioneering contemporary alternative. But how can we design with these fragile nanostructures and their eye-catching iridescent palette?
Colour. Seeing Beyond Pigment presents a group of artists and designers experimenting with this new colour technique in collaboration with Laboratorium (Biolab for Art, Design and Biotechnology of KASK & Conservatory in Ghent). This exhibition merges scientific research, a new technology and societal challenges with liberate artistic experimentation. It results in new aesthetic and ecological possibilities to literally encounter from all angles.
Participating artists and designers: Amandine David, Ann Veronica Janssens, Bram Vanderbeke, Dimitris Theocharis, Heleen Sintobin, Marlou Breuls, Tiina Pyykkinen
Scientist: Maria Boto
Curator: Annelies Thoelen
More information: https://www.z33.be/en/programma/colour/
Z33 is located in the centre of Hasselt, on the Zuivelmarkt, next to the Beguinage of Hasselt. Z33 is at walking distance from the Hasselt train station (1km). There are IC trains (every hour, 7 days a week) to Hasselt from Ostend, Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp and Liège.
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