Leto Erin Keunen (b. 2000)is a Brussels-based visual artist and designer. Her practice explores gender narratives, domestic rituals, and embodied infrastructures within normative cultural frameworks.

Her work collects fragments, relations and stories from everyday life. She combines and restructures these elements to present them as speculative interpretations that challenge our perspective on power relations and the gestures that perpetuate them.

Everyday habits are turned inside out until they become vulnerable, relational and permeable. Her handmade objects and installations bring together sculptural forms and fluid materials that possess a performative potential. The resulting deconstructions of social conditioning and gender identity translate into spatial interventions suspended in states of liminality.

Workshop Urban Safe Space

Participatory workshop
location: KUNSTHAL GENT
partner: AMAL Gent
images: Sahar Khosravi

2022 - 2023

This workshop was part of a project about gender-related fear in public spaces. During a year-long proces I introduced various design interventions, objects, and actions that would empower individuals in an urban environment and activate bystanders to take a proactive role in the city. Creative workshops were the starting point of this proces. To make experiences tangible, facilitate conversations and gradually create a deeper understanding of the issue.

During the workshop, participants could visualize their perspective on the city by depicting pain points, frustrations, feelings of insecurity, or experiences in the city. Meanwhile, we discussed our fears and the moments when this fear arises.

Through subjective mapping, participants can visualize their own experiences in their environment. Participation and personal experiences are central to this process and result in a series of subjective maps.

These workshops were organised in collaboration with Amal Gent.