oester is an anti-disciplinary laboratory for performative arts. A playground for unruly ideas, unlikely encounters and artistic collisions. Where disciplines lose their borders, conventions come undone and new forms take shape.
oester was founded by Aïda Gabriëls and Tessa Vannieuwenhuyze.
Aïda Gabriëls is a Belgian stage director and curator working at the intersection of opera, contemporary music, visual art and performance. Her practice is driven by a fascination with the relationship between sound, space and collective experience. She approaches opera as a living, unstable art form, questioning its inherited narratives, hierarchies and conventions while exploring its capacity to address the political and social tensions of the present.Her artistic trajectory began with radical reinterpretations of musical and theatrical repertoire. Early works such as Medeamaterial, I Am the Enemy You Killed, My Friend and Dance of the Seven Veils confronted questions of violence, guilt and representation. Gradually, her practice expanded beyond the traditional stage, moving between opera houses, concert halls, museums and nightclubs. With The Wild Stage (2022), Passages and Ethereal Realms (2024), she explored how music, bodies and audiences might inhabit a shared space.Recent productions include Polyphonies (Bozar, 2025), which investigates polyphony as a model for social coexistence; SEISMIC (2025), created with Ictus and Swedish composer Maria W Horn, where sound becomes a physical and architectural force; and EAT ME (2026), an opera-installation bringing together baroque music, contemporary poetry and the visual universe of , presented at Concertgebouw Brugge and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.Her international collaborations include Between Two Lights (2025), created with composer Huang Ruo, the Netherlands Chamber Choir and Needcompany, and nominated for the FEDORA Opera Prize. In June 2027 she makes her debut at La Monnaie / De Munt with Burmese Days, a new opera by Prach Boondiskulchok and Sarah Howe, subsequently presented at London's Barbican Centre.Alongside her directing work, she is a curator at Gent Festival van Vlaanderen and artistic coordinator of the international platform Music Theatre NOW. Across these roles, she advocates for a music theatre that embraces artistic risk, creates unexpected encounters and continually renegotiates the relationship between artists, audiences and the environment.-
Tessa Vannieuwenhuyze is a dramaturge and scholar researching how music artists appear theatrically within today’s platformed media ecologies. She recently completed a PhD on performance, mediation and the visibility of musical labour in the age of social media. At oester she brings this research into dramaturgical practice, exploring how opera and music theatre operate within contemporary circuits of circulation, attention and liveness.She holds a Master’s in Art History, Musicology and Theatre Studies (UGent) and an advanced Master’s in Literature (KU Leuven). Alongside oester she collaborates on various artistic projects and platforms, connecting theoretical inquiry with artistic process and audience experience.
© Anton Coene
get in touch
Aïda Gabriëls (artistic director)
Tessa Vannieuwenhuyze (dramaturge — researcher)
Maja Lozic (Muziektheater Transparant — diffusion)
partners
Muziektheater Transparant (Antwerp), deSingel (Antwerp), KMSKA (Antwerp), Concertgebouw (Bruges) & Needcompany (Brussels)
board of members
Bert Van der Auwera, Katrin Swartenbroux & Pieter D’Hooghe
official information
oester vzw
Sint-Janvest 1, bus 301
9000 Gent — BELGIUM
TAV BE 0746.757.468