Jean-Michel Othoniel - Diary of Happiness

The Boghossian Foundation presents Diary of Happiness, Jean-Michel Othoniel’s first major exhibition in Brussels, bringing together more than one hundred works inspired by thirty years of travel across the world. Reflecting the Boghossian Foundation’s mission to foster dialogue between cultures, the artist invites visitors on a journey that retraces the travels that have shaped his vision of the world. A form of geography of thought, each work is associated with a particular country. Armenia, Belgium, China, the United States, France, India, Japan, Mexico and Turkey emerge as so many remarkable destinations, forged through encounters and exchanges. Alongside the monumental sculptures and installations unfolding in the garden and throughout the spaces of the Villa Empain, a hundred watercolours, works on paper rarely shown, form the guiding thread of an intimate and joyful exhibition. Like a travel notebook, they are revealed from room to room, as the diary of years spent abroad, bearing witness to journeys driven by affection and wonder. The house inhabited by Jean-Michel Othoniel’s works becomes a place of memory and inward travel, shaped by transformation and reverie, a point of departure and of return.