Eleonor Duffin has the pleasure to invite you to the public defence of her doctoral thesis: Making Holes: Re-framing Authorship and Control through Co-Working Methodologies in Sculptural Practice.
The defence is followed by a visit to the exhibition at Fax (Hasselt city center).
- - -
Monday October 27th 2025
Defence:
14h30 - 16h30
Refugiehuis, Maastrichterstraat 100, 3500 Hasselt
Opening exhibition:
16h30 - 18h00
Fax, Maastrichterstraat 9, 3500 Hasselt
You can register for this PhD defence of Eleonor Duffin via:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdKeBo_zpy6z41H_Ks7zkzjS237DWsXiyPAW-opmgRpejDF3w/viewform
For more information, please visit:
https://www.uhasselt.be/nl/faculteiten/facark/agenda/public-defence-doctoral-thesis-eleanor-duffin
- - -
About the defence
This practice-led PhD project explores how artistic making can be a collaborative process between human and non-human forces. The research is grounded in a sustained body of sculptural and installation-based work, where theory and making are deeply intertwined. Drawing on Irish Indigenous animistic beliefs, the project challenges conventional ideas of authorship and material use in art, embracing a worldview in which materials possess their own vitality and agency.
At its core is Phantoms of Form (2016–ongoing), a speculative and evolving body of work that reanimates archival traces of historical female makers. These "hauntological" gestures disrupt linear narratives of art history and reframe authorship as a shared, distributed process. The research introduces the Slippery I, a conceptual strategy drawn from feminist theory and auto-fiction that navigates identity, collaboration and multiplicity in creative practice.
Through this integration of theory and material exploration, Making Holes contributes to contemporary debates on authorship, agency and material relationality within the visual arts.
This project was undertaken at Hasselt University & PXL-MAD School of Arts and was supervised by Prof. Dr. David Huycke and Dr. Sofie Gielis. It was funded and supported by the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Hasselt University (BOF17DOC19).
You may also like the following events from Faculteit Architectuur en Kunst Universiteit Hasselt:
Also check out other
Arts events in Hasselt,
Exhibitions in Hasselt,
Fine Arts events in Hasselt.
