Françoise Schein was born in Belgium in 1953. Her work explores questions of civic humanity, the duties and rights of human beings on Gaia, our Earth, and collective memory through participatory artworks installed in public spaces. Her practice combines ceramics, cartography, and literary and graphic texts, following a methodology adaptable to different social and cultural contexts.
Trained in architecture in Brussels, in urban design at Columbia University in New York, and in visual arts with Robert Morris at NYU. She taught at ESAM – École Supérieure d’Arts & Médias in Caen/Cherbourg until 2024. In 2016, she was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium.
Schein has created numerous permanent public artworks in urban spaces, notably in subway stations in Paris (Concorde Station, 1990), Brussels (Saint-Gilles, 1992), Lisbon (Parque, 1994), Stockholm (Universitetet, 1998), Berlin (Westhafen, 2000), Rio de Janeiro (Siqueira Campos, 2003), São Paulo (Luz, completed in 2017), and Lisbon (Encarnação, 2022). She has also created major works in other cities, including New York (SoHo, 1985), Haifa (Jewish-Arab Cultural Center, 1993), Coventry (Millennium Plaza, 2000), Bremen (Rhododendron Park, 2001), Ramallah (Municipal Theater, 2011), and Vienna (Museumsplatz, 2018).
In 1997, she founded the nonprofit organization INSCRIRE, which supports her collaborative projects involving residents, children, and youth across various regions.
Her project To write Human Rights, launched in 2000, is an international network of participatory ceramic artworks in public spaces, engaging young people and teenagers in multiple countries including Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Brazil, Haiti, and Palestine, among others. Some of the most emblematic works from this network include the mural at the Municipal Theater of Ramallah (2011), the one in Parc Martissant in Port-au-Prince (2017), the Galeria dos Estados subway station in Brasília (2018), and the juvenile detention center of Fraipont in Belgium (2021).
Between 2022 and 2024, she created Histoires de Vies – Under the Same Sky in Brussels-Molenbeek, a ceramic mural work commissioned by the KANAL – Centre Pompidou museum and developed in collaboration with newly arrived students from the Athénée Royal Toots Thielemans. The installation explores migratory narratives and the marks they leave on urban space. Simultaneously, she developed A Memória das Pedras in Louriçal do Campo, Portugal— a participatory ceramic project highlighting the importance of preserving landscapes and natural territories.
The exhibition Françoise Schein. AIPOTU. A Portrait in Reverse, presented at the Grand Curtius in Liège (May–August 2025), offers a retrospective look at her career through a selection of archives, notebooks, drawings, photographs, and films, and explores the profound links between artistic engagement, transmission, and collective memory.