Experience

ANTWERP QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL 2025 | A Night Called Quest, Friday 29 and Saturday 30 August, at De Studio

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Antwerp Queer Arts Festival returns with a month of queer artistic activities in Antwerp. Sometimes it’s just in the name. Antwerp Queer Arts Festival 2025 runs from Saturday 2 to Saturday 30 August. As usual, it’s intertwined with Antwerp Pride.

On Friday 29 and Saturday 30 August, De Studio in Antwerp will open its new cultural season with the second edition of A Night Called Quest, a festival dedicated to young queer artists and organised in collaboration with the Antwerp Queer Arts Festival.

The event will showcase work by eleven emerging artists from across Flanders, presenting the results of a four-week residency. Visitors can expect a wide range of performances, visual art, poetry, dance, installations and music spread throughout the venue.

The programme explores queer expression in diverse forms. Audiences are invited to experience a language-driven vulva celebration, encounter comedy and dance combined in one performance, lose themselves among kombucha scobies, and consider the boundary between organic and synthetic skin. 

The works on display range from intimate textile collages and colourful large-scale paintings to scenography, dance improvisation and activist imagery.

The festival will feature Lennon Kors, who performs as both the opener and the closing act in the alter ego of King Diana, a theatrical figure inspired by themes of miscommunication, past relationships and sexuality. 

Other contributors include writer and performer Nata Mandaria, who examines femininity, migration and motherhood; Ju.j.u, a dancer and stand-up comedian who blends both practices on stage; and contemporary dancer Sam Hawkes, who works with improvisation to translate her impressions of the world around her.

Further contributions come from interdisciplinary artist Alexandra Bierlaire, whose solo centres on the materiality of the skin; visual artists Iris Van der Borght and Juliette Volders, who merge painting, sculpture, textile works and tattoos in a joint exploration of queer identity; and scenographer Ludo Dury, who presents his first performance combining dance, spoken word and audiovisual art. 

Artists Fanny Wellens and Bobby Benzo Brown bring collaborative visual works that respond to tensions between different beliefs and worldviews, while Delta van Melle uses experimental materials such as glass, wall paint and kombucha scoby to create layered installations.

A Night Called Quest offers audiences the opportunity to move from room to room within De Studio, encountering different artistic practices in each space. 

The timetable of performances will be released a week in advance, but attendees are advised to arrive by 8 PM to experience the programme in full.

Antwerp Queer Arts Festival 2025

Antwerp Pride 2025

Darklands 2025-2026

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