Once We Existed Exhibition

“Once We Existed” brings together two generations of artists around the passage of time and what remains from lived experiences. Through a selection of works by Pieter Laurens Mol (The Netherlands, 1946) and Laía Argüelles Folch (Spain, 1986), this exhibition explores the active force shaping us humans in relation to the fleeting nature of life. Forty years separate these two artists, yet their work converges in a shared attentiveness to traces: those left by decisions, presences and absences inscribed in the spirit of the times. What once existed does not disappear entirely: it sediments, transforms, and haunts the present with metaphysical persistence. The exhibition inaugurates Chiquita Room’s Brussels space at Passage Bailli Louise as a founding gesture: a place where time carries meaning and the encounter between different trajectories generates resonances.