Expo: our top 3 of the week

For a lot of galleries, the jolly season is a welcome break. But there are more than enough places open over the holidays to take your breath away with the imaginative power of images.

SABENA. TRAVEL IN STYLE
The exhibition "Sabena. Travel in Style" at the Atomium brings two Belgian icons together. The exhibition focuses on the period from 1950 to 1970 when the "S" in Sabena still stood for the high service with which it competed with other airlines. Visitors will experience the atmosphere from the check-in desk to landing through posters designed in-house, glittering tableware, and fun Sabena toys. The airhostesses still prepared bottles of baby formula, and their appearance, sometimes in kimono, aimed to reassure you on the flight. Photos from the archive of aviation specialist Frans Van Humbeek show the evolution from rattan chairs in the Handley Page planes of 1925 to ergonomic couchettes with a view on the most prestigious flights in the 1950s.
> Atomium. > 10/09, Brussels

PICASSO. SCULPTURES
Throughout his life as an artist, Pablo Picasso never stopped sculpting: sculpture was his secret garden, offering scope for experimentation. This Bozar exhibition brings together 80 rarely seen works, covering 50 years of creative work. In the isolation of a succession of studios, Picasso engaged with every kind of material, making bronzes, sculptures in wood, cubist and other assemblages, sculptures in soldered wire, ceramics, and works made by cutting up sheet metal. As well as an opportunity to discover Picasso's endless inventiveness (two salad shakers become a woman's head, for example), this exhibition allows us to appreciate the relationships between his sculpted works and his paintings and the objects in his own collection.
> Bozar. > 05/03, Brussels

PHOTO18 FESTIVAL: LOVING EARTH
From deserts to alpine meadows, from majestic but futile human constructions to psychedelic geological kaleidoscopes, and from colourised undergrowth to the patterns we can see in the natural world when we view it from a height; from plastic flowers on a gaunt tree to roads that lead across salt deserts – it's always the same world, but seen through the lenses of eighteen different photographers from eighteen different countries. This first edition of a new annual festival devoted to photography explores the theme of landscape – reframed, redrawn, and, sometimes, simply regarded.
> Hangar H18. > 18/01, Ixelles

JOANA VASCONCELOS: DE FIL(S) EN AIGUILLE(S)
If you think knitting and crochet are hobbies for ageing hippies, you're wrong. And you'll realise it when you see the crocheting and knitting of Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos at La Patinoire Royale, a beautiful space with Material Girl displayed in its central room. This knitted piece is 23 metres long, 9.35 metres high, and 5.25 metres wide. In the unheated room next door, you will see Valkyrie, a knitted piece that refers to Norse mythology. In the cellar you will be amazed by octopuses, and the upper floor is the domain of Simenon, an enormous cat with a crocheted jumper. Genuine fun.
> La Patinoire Royale. > 25/03, Saint-Gilles