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Belgium
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–6pm
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Jef Geys: You don’t see what you think you see
February 2–May 19, 2024
Always critical of image and language, Jef Geys (1934-2018, BE) aimed to expose “the patterns and structures behind what one thinks one sees,” and encouraged self-reflection and scepticism. WIELS takes this as a starting point for the large-scale survey of Geys’ heterogeneous work, enriched by documents from the artist's archives. From the early 1960s, Geys compiled an archive with the titles of everything he considered part of his artistic practice serving as its index, demonstrating his versatility and broader interests as an artist, and as a precursor of interdisciplinary practice. The exhibition will result in a survey publication of Geys’ work, published in June 2024.
Curators: Dirk Snauwaert & Charlotte Friling
In close collaboration with: the Jef Geys Estate
Oscar Murillo: Masses
February 2–April 28, 2024
After his memorable intervention in the group exhibition The Absent Museum (2017), WIELS invites back Oscar Murillo (1986, CO) with Masses, a solo exhibition that establishes a cartography of mass—liquid, material, sonic—across a large-scale installation. The exhibition marks the winding down of Frequencies and ushers in a new phase that sees the collection of canvases and the memories they hold flattened into raw material mass, to be stitched together and used as a resource for new works, provocatively disrupting the intellectual project of an archive.
Curator: Helena Kritis
Alexis Blake: Crack Nerve Boogie Swerve
June 7–August 11, 2024
Alexis Blake (1981, US/NL) presents a new iteration of the eponymous performance as an exhibition. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates visual art, dance and performance, exploring the body as an archive of embodied knowledge. In the exhibition, Blake focuses on notions of transparency, resistance, resonance and disruption. She uses glass and breaking not only as metaphors for the fragility and strength of the individual and collective body, but also as tools to communicate, break patterns and collectively create a new vocabulary of sound and movement.
Curator: Helena Kritis
Joseph Kusendila: Platteau, Groupe Theatral
Av. Van Volxemlaan 354, 1190 Brussels
Rue Baron Hortastraat 9, 1000 Brussels
June 7–August 11, 2024
Joseph Kusendila (1985, BE) produces a spatial installation for the WIELS Blomme building, transforming a floor into a place of withdrawal or shelter. A new film Groupe Theatral which Kusendila started filming in 2021 will be presented in Cinematek.
Curator: Dirk Snauwaert
Jana Euler
Summer 2024
Ana Jotta: On peut, On peut encore
September 6, 2024–January 5, 2025
Ana Jotta (1946, PT) has built a body of work that reads as semiotic riddles or everyday poetic signs which she executes pictorially, although in a depersonalized way. Rejecting any claims of authorship or authority, Jotta considers her work to be what emerges as she constantly situates and re-situates herself within the world.
Curators: Anthony Huberman & Miguel Wandschneider, who curated a previous realisation at CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco.
Christopher Kulendran Thomas
September 6, 2024–January 5, 2025
Christopher Kulendran Thomas (1979, UK) explores the lost legacies of liberation movements through the prism of the defeated revolutionary struggle for an independent Tamil homeland of the island now known as Sri Lanka. Processing the fallout of the recent civil war on that island, he’s interested in how the history of the defeated is written and framed by the victors of a conflict, often working with advanced technologies to examine alternative possibilities at the intersection of history, technology and citizenship.
Curator: Helena Kritis
Performative and film programme
Indiscipline at Grand Casino Knokke (happening)
March 30, 2024
Indiscipline is an annual one-day happening with performances and experimental interventions set at the Grand Casino in the Belgian seaside resort of Knokke-Heist, known for its rich art and film history—in particular the legendary EXPRMNTL film festival (1947-1974). Featuring (among others): Lenio Kaklea, Margaux Schwarz, Michael Snow, Nafaq (Amina Abouelghar & Hanin Tarek) with Lander Gyselinck, Hagar Tenenbaum & Irina Jasnowski Pascual, Eleanor Ivory Weber and Xavier Garcia Bardon on EXPRMNTL.
Curator: Pauline Hatzigeorgiou
In collaboration with Knokke-Heist
Moya Michael: It Is Like A Finger Pointing A Way To The Moon (performance)
Autumn
In It Is Like A Finger Pointing A Way To The Moon, dancer, performer and choreographer Moya Michael, in collaboration with an invited group of artists, are searching for the movement of different unyielding languages in a new performance presented for the first time in the gallery. They challenge the possibility to sense the remnants of a language inwardly, so that the deeper they go into their bodies, the wider they go into its dismembered but enduring vocabularies and grammars, without ever seizing or claiming them.
Curator: Helena Kritis
In collaboration with: KVS, Bergen Kunsthall
Noor Abed: A Night We Held Between (film)
Autumn
Taking the Labyrinth as main historical inspiration, Noor Abed’s (1988, PS) new film connects mythology to a present socio-political reality in Palestine. Filmed in particular ancient sites in Palestine—caves, carved holes, underground passages, and wild valleys—the land becomes our main character. The work traverses beyond the first layer of visibility, and reveals a vast, hidden world similar to the one we know, pointing to what was lost, forgotten, or unsaid.
Curator: Helena Kritis
In collaboration with: Han Nefkens Foundation
