Ali Al-Kawaz & Hugo Boutsen
@Ten Weyngaert
Ali Al-Kawaz, a multidisciplinary artist who participated in Homelands 2019, will give workshops at Ten Weyngaert in Forest. He will be accompanied by Hugo Boutsen, a cultural worker from Ten Weyngaert in Brussels.
Ali Al-Kawaz
Born on April 22, 1994 in Babylon, Iraq, Ali Al-Kawaz left his war-torn country in 2015 and headed for Belgium. Passionate about drawing since the age of six, he made his very first sketch, a drawing of a boat, on a cigarette pack in his father's workshop. During his adolescence, he discovered oil painting and it is in a self-taught way that he develops very quickly his technique of painting and drawing.
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Ali Al-Kawaz obtained his diploma in painting from the École Supérieure des Arts de l'Image "Le 75" in June 2021.
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Before starting his studies in Belgium, Ali had already participated in several exhibitions, mainly in Brussels. In 2018, he created an art workshop with a friend (Ateliers Alwan); workshop that tends to refine the sense of observation of emerging artists from 6 years and up. During the same year, he joins for the first time the team of the project "Homelands, places of belonging".
Hugo Boutsen
My name is Hugo Boutsen, I am 58 years old and I have been working in community center Ten Weyngaert since 2009. Before that I worked for a long time in the Pianofabriek in Sint-Gillis. I am a socio-cultural worker and am co-responsible for the courses on offer, the children's activities, the organization of exhibitions, concerts and film screenings. I am the editor of the bi-monthly Duden magazine and I try to support neighborhood initiatives from the community center.
I have been living in Saint-Gilles for twenty years, but in the meantime I feel much more at home in Forest.
My hobbies are reading, walking and listening to music.
@Ten Weyngaert
Ten Weyngaert is the Dutch-speaking community center of Forest and is part of N22 together with 21 other Dutch-speaking community centers in Brussels.
In Ten Weyngaert, Dutch speakers and Dutch-speaking associations are at home. At the same time, the community center is the place where Dutch speakers openly meet and cooperate with other (language) communities.
Ten Weyngaert wants to promote the quality of life in the city and takes social diversity as its starting point. It strives for a sustainable society and stimulates the participation of residents in the municipality and the users of the community center. To this end, it supports community-building projects and resident dynamics.
In the development of the cultural offerings for children and adults, encounter, self-development and development of socio-cultural competencies are central.