Conversation between Liz Johnson Artur and Luna Mahoux,
moderated by Devrim Bayar

With Devrim Bayar

Devrim Bayar works currently as a Senior Curator at KANAL - Centre Pompidou.

Previously she was curator at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, where she curated the exhibitions of Wolfgang Tillmans, R.H. Quaytman, Jacqueline de Jong, Huguette Caland, René Daniëls, Sammy Baloji, Pierre Leguillon, Thomas Bayrle, Daan van Golden, Helena Almeida, among other artists, as well as group shows, such as Something Stronger Than Me* exploring recent developments in collaborative art practices.

Devrim Bayar also co-curated a series of exhibitions Un-Scene featuring emerging artists working in Belgium. Her independent curatorial projects include the multi-disciplinary festival Indiscipline at Palais de Tokyo (2016), the Geneva Biennale — Sculpture Garden (2022) and Poésie contre fin du monde conceived with French artist Ethan Assouline as a sort of experimental community library in Montpellier (2024).

She is an author and editor of numerous publications and exhibitions catalogues, with recent essays on Walter Pfeiffer (Swiss Institute/Pacific, 2025) and Mimosa Echard (Mousse Publishing, 2025).

Devrim Bayar recently initiated the Brussels Ass Book Fair, an independent book fair featuring productions from LGBTQIA+ communities, as well as a music programme dedicated to sound productions by multidisciplinary artists broadcasted on community radio Kiosk.

Luna Mahoux 

Luna Mahoux  is a Brussels based Belgian artist who explores Afro-diasporic, invisibilized narratives by blending music, documentary, and archives. A graduate of La Cambre in Painting, she joined the Fresnoy in 2023. 

Luna draws from personal archives, vernacular and popular images from the internet, and Black cultures to deconstruct, recontextualize, and reinvent forgotten stories. Her work aims to "make visible invisibilized communities" and questions the mechanisms of identity reappropriation in a world saturated with images. Through her travels in the United States, she writes about music and the complexity of Black experiences through the lens of collective memory and individual narratives. 

In 2023, she received the tiff – Emerging Belgian Photography Prize, awarded by the FOMU in Antwerp, and the Fintro Prize in 2024 (Brussels). Her works have been exhibited in institutions such as Photo Elysée (Lausanne), Bourse du commerce ( Paris) France,  Switzerland, Triangle Astérides, (Marseille), France, Coalmine ( Wintherthur) Switzerland, the Salon de Montrouge (Paris), Mécène du Sud (Montpellier), Villa Médicis (Les Chichas de la pensée), Circulation Festival at CENTQUATRE (Paris), KANAL – Centre Pompidou (Brussels), FOMU (Antwerp), Basel Social Club (Basel), Cherish (Geneva).

© Luca Borini

Liz Johnson Artur

Liz Johnson Artur (b. 1964, Bulgaria) lives and works in London.

Her practice includes photography, film and installation, placing the photograph as a starting point to develop work. She has shown internationally, with solo exhibitions Black Balloon Archive at the British Library (2024), of life of love of sex of movement of hope at FOAM Amsterdam (2021), Dusha at the Brooklyn Museum in New York and If you know the beginning, the end is no trouble at the South London Gallery in London (both 2019). Group exhibitions included Black Photojournalism at Carnegie Museum of Art (2025), Tituba, Who Protect Us? at Palais de Tokyo (2024), Pick-Up Notes at Melly Rotterdam (2024), Masculinities at Barbican, London (2020); A Time For New Dreams at the Serpentine Galleries, London (2019) and the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018).

Her work is held in public and private collections in the US and the UK. Johnson Artur has received the Women in Motion Award 2021 at Rencontres d'Arles and the Turner Bursary in 2020. Two new monographic publications have just been released, I Will Keep You in Good Company with SPBH Editions/Mack Books and PDA with Bierke Verlag.