Sam Druant Belgian, b. 1998

  • Biography

    Biography

    Sam is an artist whose practice navigates the complexities of everyday struggles and societal expectations, transforming them into imaginative alternative worlds. With a BA and MA in Textile Design from LUCA School of Arts Ghent and an MFA in Fine Arts from HDK-Valand University of Gothenburg, she has developed a research-driven approach that expands upon her textile-based practice.

     

    Between 2018 and 2022, Sam co-founded BOX22, an artist-run space that deepened her engagement with exhibition-making. Currently based between Antwerp (BE) and Gothenburg (SE), she continues to explore artistic research and the evolving possibilities of textile-based art.

     

    Interdisciplinary collaborations with other artists and collectives play a crucial role in her process, continuously expanding her knowledge and engagement with public spaces.

  • Making Waves at the Well, To Hunt a Hunter, We Gather, at Geukens & De Vil gallery

    Photo credit: David Samyn

    MAKING WAVES AT THE WELL, 2023

     

    Making Waves at the Well

    To Hunt a Hunter, We Gather, at Geukens & De Vil gallery
    Making Waves at the Well was part of Sam’s first solo expo, To Hunt a Hunter, We Gather, at Geukens & De Vil Gallery. The expo departed from the idea of Ursula K. Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, in which she states that the first invention was not a weapon but a ‘carrier bag’ centered on gathering food. Sam saw their academic challenges as such a carrier bag—where experiences, theoretical sources, images, conversations, and more were collected, forming a kind of web that brought them together and from which nourishing thoughts emerged. Making Waves at the Well also suggests a dynamic interplay between stillness and movement, a disturbance or activation of something deep and reflective

  • Nighty Night, 2021

    Weaving Feminist Narratives
    image: Nante De Boeck

    Weaving Feminist Narratives

    Textiles are central to Sam’s practice. Embracing their European historical association with femininity and the domestic sphere, she uses this dynamic tension to construct layered narratives. Through her practice, she critiques societal norms while contributing to the contemporary revival of textile art. Her works often take the form of colorful, intricate tapestries accompanied by prose or poetry, where material and text engage in a continuous dialogue. 

     

    Drawing from a diverse range of literary and theoretical influences, Sam engages with concepts such as Ursula K. Le Guin’s carrier bag theory—which redefines storytelling as an act of gathering rather than hero-centric conquest—and Jennifer Bloomer’s hatchery, a metaphor for generative, nonlinear knowledge systems. Through these frameworks, she reimagines modes of knowledge transmission and disrupts conventional narrative structures.

  • ARTWORKS