WERK - STUK
Concept by Saar Swinters, developed in collaboration with Dilbeek / CC Westrand as part of the 2025–2026 programme theme: rituals.
WERK-STUK | Westrand Cultuurcentrum Dilbeek
Interview met textielkunstenares Saar Swinters | Westrand Cultuurcentrum Dilbeek

2025 - 2026

Throughout the season, this participatory artwork has grown in three phases: breaking, laying and mending. Visitors were invited to let go of a thought, feeling or memory by symbolically breaking a plate. Hundreds of fragments were collected, forming a shared mosaic and collective narrative. Saar Swinters transformed this mosaic into a drawing and textile pattern on a large linen canvas, gradually stitched together throughout the season by a team of experienced embroiderers, reflecting on healing, connection and community. The canvas also travels to locations across the city, including a youth care centre, a refugee reception centre, a residential care home and schools, inviting new participants to contribute to the work.

©Abdo fotografie
©Elise Vandeplancke

Silent Life
Concept by Saar Swinters, a city project in collaboration with the Oostende/De Grote Post, created a way to make loss and absent loved ones visible

2023 - 2025
A participatory approach in which textiles serve as carriers of mourning and memory. Visitors could bring meaningful textiles that, through appliqué and embroidery techniques, are abstracted into outlines on a 20-meter-long tablecloth. This patchwork of traces becomes a visual representation of loss, a tangible memory of the personal within the collective. The table and cloth provides space for reflection, comfort, and letting go, with art shaping the process of mourning and the transience of memory.
Traveled to Theater aan Zee, WZC A.Lacour & Vuurwerk

©Hans Lenvain

Playground
Shaping the future of public space in the neighborhood through dreaming and building together. A happening by Zoë Brennan & Elisa Palm in Mariakerke, Gent. 

2024
Swinters was invited to lead a collective session around a tablecloth—a textile artifact passed through many hands in the neighborhood. She introduced the flannel stitch connector, an embroidery technique surrounding the cloth. The stitching served as both initiation and closure: learning the repetitive motion sparked dialogue among neighbors, marked the project's end, and served as a collective remembrance of the textile heritage in this neighborhood.

©Speelplaats

Birthground

Birthground is a rural project where heritage, art, and landscape converge, taking place at the site of Braakmanpolder (Biervliet, NL) curated by Carien Poissonnier.

2022
In this project, Saar Swinters facilitated the participatory aspect of Marinus van Dijke’s work, where a map of the region’s dikes and polders was transferred onto a 'polder blanket.' Farmers, locals, and exhibition visitors gathered around to share stories while collectively outlining and embroidering the map, reflecting on the past in a communal act.

©Geboortegrond

Birth blanket
Commissioned work
2022

Saar Swinters explores the concept of collectivity in an era of neoliberalism. This patchwork of personal textiles is more than a crafted object; it is a social statement. Swinters gathered fabrics from the child’s future community, emphasizing shared responsibility over self-sufficiency. In the final phase, she brought this community together to add the last stitches, turning the work into both a physical artifact and a social ritual. Birth Blanket thus becomes a tangible monument to connection and collective care.

©Sara De Graeve