Messy Sessie x Laura Vandewynckel: Needle Felting

Laura Vandewynckel is the artist of the solo exhibition 'The Parliament of the Pitiful', ongoing in Pilar until the 23th of October 2026. For next week's Messy Sessie Laura will host a beginner friendly Needle Felting (or Dry Felting) workshop, a technique she also uses for some of her works in The Parliament of the Pitiful:

𝐓𝐡𝐞 (𝐮𝐧)𝐜𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐲
Inspired by The Parliament of the Pitiful, the exhibition by animation filmmaker and theatre maker Laura Vandewynckel, this Messy Session invites you to give some unlikely characters a softer side.
Laura’s exhibition brings together a motley crew of outcasts, brought to life as mechanical puppets and robots: life-sized horses made of sisal fibres, a miniature wolf in sheepskin, a cluster of cardboard ferryboats, a heap of discarded space debris, and a creature of progress made from willow branches. Whenever possible, she works with organic and translucent materials, giving even the most unlikely creatures a surprisingly tangible and vulnerable presence.
For this Messy Session, Laura will introduce you to the wonderfully accessible technique of dry felting. With nothing more than a felting needle and tufts of carded sheep’s wool, you can sculpt soft, three-dimensional figures by repeatedly poking and shaping the fibres.
But what happens when we turn something controversial, unwanted or difficult into something soft and cuddly?
Inspired by the outcasts in the exhibition, each participant will choose a non-human entity or phenomenon and transform it into a small woollen creature. Something we might normally fear, reject, or blame becomes something you might want to hold, touch and cherish.
In this 3 hours workshop you’ll learn the basics of making a simple armature and working with dry felting, while experimenting with the strange and playful power of making the uncuddly cuddly.

𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝟏𝟖:𝟎𝟎-𝟐𝟏:𝟎𝟎 𝐢𝐧 @barpilarbrussels.
Free, but on 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙣𝙡𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙠!

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐥 in our Pilar Expo (1st & 2nd floor) is free to visit from Wednesday to Friday, from 14:00 - 20:00.