FUR UNFOLDED: Animals, Materiality and the Belgian Fur Trade, 1880-1940
The exhibition “Fur Unfolded: Animals, Materiality and the Belgian Fur Trade, 1880–1940” was held at the Vandenhove Pavilion from 14 to 16 May 2026. It was developed by a team of Master’s students in Art History at Ghent University, under the supervision of Professor Liza Foley. In the exhibition we explored how animal bodies were transformed, re-imagined, and re-presented as luxury objects within broader systems of production and consumption. Drawing on archival, visual and object-based research, it brought together perspectives from fashion studies, material culture and human-animal studies to propose new frameworks for engaging with fur as a complex, mediated material.
Our exhibition was guided by seven interrelated themes that together traced the material presence of the animal and the cultural, material, and ecological life of fur. It began by situating fur within Belgium’s international trade networks, mapping the routes and connections centred in Brussels and revealing how deeply embedded fur was in the city’s broader landscape of fashion and luxury.
The focus then shifted to transforming the fur itself. This included classifying and processing. Within the categorisation theme, the most commonly used animals in Belgium and how they were transformed into desirable commodities were identified. The processing theme highlighted the processes through which these animals were transformed into reimagined, fragmented assemblages, in which the original animal body was only partially recognisable.
Attention then moved to the spaces and systems that shaped fur’s visibility and value. Through architecture and interior design, fur garments were staged within carefully constructed environments defined by ornamentation, monumentality, materiality, and atmosphere, turning display into a luxurious experience. This staged presentation was echoed in Mallien’s commercial catalogues, where visual arrangement, commercial repetition, and cultural setting worked to produce meaning and reinforce fur as a desirable luxury commodity.
Alongside these modes of display and representation, the exhibition also considered practices of care and maintenance. This theme demonstrated how fur garments were preserved over time and how, despite never being fully subject to human control, animal matter was nevertheless disciplined through practices that slowed decay, managed odour and protected it from pests.
Finally, the exhibition turned to the broader ecological consequences of these human-animal relations. The demand for muskrat fur, better known as bisam, contributed to the species becoming invasive in Belgium, with significant impacts on regional biodiversity. This case exposed the instability of human attempts to reduce animals to mere resources, showing how they actively shaped human histories in return.
Rather than wanting to endorse the fur industry or resolve contemporary debates surrounding its use, we wanted to understand fur as a complex material whose cultural status is neither inherent nor settled, but continuously made and remade through labour, mediation and display. By making these processes visible, the exhibition invited viewers to rethink not only the materiality of fur itself, but the cultural mechanisms through which (animal) materials come to matter at all.
