2025 AFIELD Forum: Transitional Justice by Artists. Photo by Veerle Vercauteren.
In 2014, while working at the art center Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (France), I had the chance to initiate a partnership with the Maré Art Center in Rio de Janeiro, led by the choreographer Lia Rodrigues. As part of this collaboration, we traveled with French artists and historians to Rio to visit the center, located in the biggest favela of Rio, where performances and roundtable discussions were to be held. The experience left an indelible mark on me.
Witnessing the social and political context of the favelas—and the deep-rooted work carried out there by Lia and her collaborators—reawakened in me a powerful belief in the transformative potential of art. Confronted with the raw realities of poverty and systemic violence, the role of dance and performance took on a new urgency and significance. Art was no longer an abstract concept or intellectual pursuit; it became a vital tool for survival, expression, and resistance.
That initial connection has continued to evolve. As director of BUDA, an arts venue in Belgium, I pursued the collaboration with Lia Rodrigues through the European network APAP–Feminist Futures. This has allowed me to meet and host fantastic Brazilian artists and present their work in festivals. My last encounter with Lia Rodrigues took place recently, when I was invited to moderate a discussion following the presentation of her piece Borda at Kunstenfestivaldesarts.
It so happens that Lia was the first fellow of AFIELD, and today is a kind “godmother” of the program, which has grown over time into a major international support network for socially engaged artistic practices. AFIELD supports and amplifies artistic initiatives (through fellowships but also through the facilitation of collaborations across the globe), with the ambition of positioning arts and culture at the core of social innovation. Although I’ve been forced to follow AFIELD’s work from a distance due primarily to scheduling conflicts, their mission deeply resonates with me. The artistic initiatives they support—whether schools, nonprofits, festivals, or small enterprises—respond directly to community needs, rather than operating under conventional definitions of art institutions. They represent a new and necessary paradigm in the art field.
Lia Rodrigues exemplifies this philosophy not only through her project of creating an art center and dance school in the favela, but also through her choreographic practice itself, which cannot be separated from her social engagement. Her piece Borda stands as a testament to her commitment to decentering and displacement, and to the power of encounters. The performance, poised between fury and enchantment (aptly, the titles of her two previous works), poses an essential question: What do we do with the fury of the world? Borda is an alchemy of pain and joy, driven by collective emotional intelligence. The piece conjures ancient monsters out of fabric and plastic, grotesque theatrical gestures, and dreamlike sci-fi landscapes. It’s a vision more than a performance, constantly shifting and morphing. The materials used—cheap, salvaged, recycled—reveal an ecological and an economic strategy: survival, sustainability, and resistance. The word “borda,” with its layered meanings—embroidery, edge, decoration, imagination—captures the spirit of the work: multifaceted, subtle, and brimming with possibility.
Beyond Lia’s powerful contribution, which was part of both Kunstenfestival and the AFIELD Forum, the latter, held in Brussels at Kanal Centre Pompidou, focused on “transitional justice.” I arrived to this forum thirsty—thirsty to encounter initiatives that go beyond political posturing and instead ground their action in tangible, embedded practices. These projects do not merely intersect with art; they are art, infused with a multitude of skills, professions, and lived experiences.
The forum’s structure was remarkably rich: interviews, conversations, workshops, keynote lectures, professional gatherings over meals, decolonial city walks, film screenings, and two performances presented in partnership with Kunstenfestival. All of this was framed by the notion of transitional justice—legal, institutional, and cultural processes that address human rights violations and facilitate healing in the aftermath of violence.
One of the forum’s great strengths lies in its ability to convene AFIELD fellows over time and across geographies. These gatherings foster deep exchanges between individuals working on similar themes but in very different contexts—a solidarity network in the making.
Though I couldn’t attend every session, the ones I did witness were profoundly moving. For instance, Alejandra Ballón Gutiérrez (AFIELD Fellow 2015) offered a sobering presentation on forced sterilization programs in Peru during the 1990s. Her research revealed how the National Reproductive Health and Family Planning Program was a veiled tool of biopower and ethnic cleansing, targeting Indigenous women under the guise of poverty reduction. Through her films, she amplifies the voices of survivors—women who recount, often anonymously, the violence they endured: lack of informed consent, psychological trauma, abandonment by their partners. The act of testifying on film becomes, in itself, a form of reparation and resistance.
Another remarkable initiative came from Cameroon. Steve Happi, a former prison inmate, shared the story of Jail Time Records, a music label he founded while incarcerated in Douala. Working with Italian NGO worker Dione Roach, and with permission from prison authorities, Happi established a recording studio within the prison. He began producing music created by prisoners, giving voice to a community otherwise silenced and stigmatized. Since his release, he has continued working with current and former inmates. The music I’ve heard, raw and vibrant, is a testament to both suffering and astonishing creativity. It challenges us to reconsider the purpose of incarceration, advocating for rehabilitation over punishment, and demonstrating art’s power to heal and transform.
This theme resonates with the work of Jesse Krimes in the United States. After serving time in federal prison, Krimes founded the Center for Art and Advocacy in 2022. Its mission: to support justice-impacted artists and challenge punitive legal systems through art. Krimes’s own story is emblematic. While in prison, he created artworks from soap, smuggling them out piece by piece. He repurposed common prison items—playing cards, toothpaste, batteries—into a system of clandestine creativity. His work, and that of those he now mentors, echoes the resourcefulness found in Jeremy Deller’s prison-object collections, which I once saw exhibited and which made a deep impression on me. These artifacts, born of scarcity, brim with imagination and resilience.
The forum also screened several films, among them Khiam (2000) by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. Through static, intimate interviews, the film gives voice to survivors of the Khiam detention camp in South Lebanon. They recount the minute acts of resistance and invention—sculpting with olive pits, dyeing with earth pigments, crafting chess pieces from trash—that kept their humanity alive under inhuman conditions. The film is not just a testimony of suffering; it is a metaphysical reflection on dignity, representation, and memory. After the camp’s destruction, the filmmakers returned to ask a haunting question: How do we preserve the memory of places history tries to erase?
Other guests also left a deep impression. Though I could not engage in depth with all of them, I feel compelled to highlight Joseph Kaifala, a writer, lawyer, and human rights advocate from Sierra Leone, founder of the Center for Memory and Reparations, an oral history archive recording testimonies from survivors of the country’s brutal civil war (1991–2002). One line from his talk continues to echo in my mind: “How do we classify the child soldier who was both a primary victim and a principal perpetrator of violence?” This question captures the complexity of transitional justice. Rigid dichotomies of victim and perpetrator often fail to grasp the layered realities of war. Through education, audiovisual archives, and public dialogues, the project seeks not only to heal individual trauma but to build a collective narrative. Kaifala’s work underscores the idea that by confronting the horrors of the past, we can help prevent future atrocities and instill democratic values in future generations.
The AFIELD Forum did not aim to simplify or resolve these complex issues. Instead, it offered a space of encounter—between geographies, disciplines, generations. Over three intense days, I found myself immersed in multiple realities, each reflecting a different form of violence, resistance, and repair. What united them was the commitment to long-term engagement, to building new forms of collective life. I left the forum full of gratitude and hope—gratitude for those who do this often invisible and difficult work, hope that more of us will recognize the role that art can play, not just as commentary, but as action, as solidarity, as justice.
