Maarten Inghels

Maarten Inghels (b. °1988, Belgium) is a visual artist, writer, and poet. His interdisciplinary practice explores the boundaries of fiction through novels, performances, sculptures, and installations in the public space.

With The Invisible Route (2019), he created a city map for pedestrians to navigate the urban landscape unseen in an era of surveillance. His sculptures and performances, such as the monumental SAVE OUR SOULS (2022) —a 160-ton sand installation—and his journey on a polystyrene raft shaped like the word WATER (2018), reflect an ongoing dialogue between language, space, and community.

He has created social sculptures such as Human Chess (2024), a chess game with living participants on Mechelen’s Grand Market Square, and a monument for lost pets, consisting of an idiosyncratic collection of missing cat, dog, and bird posters, which served as a starting point for conversations with their owners.

As an author, Inghels has published several poetry collections and novels. With The Miracle of Belgium (2021), he wrote a novel about his nerve-wracking relationship with the world’s greatest con artist. Hannibal & Gideon (2025) is the account of an elephant journey across the Alps, retracing the footsteps of Hannibal. From 2016 to 2018, he was the city poet of Antwerp, Belgium, with his poetry appearing as tattoos, plantable poetry, and public surveys.