On the ground and in the atmosphere, as both an element and a resource, water constitutes us and overflows the world. Protean in form – rain, seas, droplets, dew, streams, clouds, fog, and tears – it is the essential source of all life. Diverted, extracted, and polluted, water has now become a vital issue in the ongoing ecological crisis. But although it has been conquered, the abyssal depths remain today more mysterious than the Moon, land of dreams, inhabited by fantastic monsters.

This exhibition follows the cycle of water, from sunken civilizations to ritual practices and the troubled waters of trade routes. The hybrid figure of the siren or mermaid, by turns malevolent and protective, half woman, half animal, acts as a guide to navigate between these worlds, from the depths to the surface. Her ambivalence resonates with that of water, a space of metamorphoses, between waters of rejuvenation and of doom.

The show invites us to explore the different states of water through the artists’ eyes, from its representation to its political implications, from the commodity transformed into a resource to the metaphorical quest for its source. Diving into this liquid world opens up a host of contradictions, when tales of water’s origins intermingle with those that conjure up future times in which it threatens us with flooding and drought, and sea levels rise while rivers run dry.

“Mermaids are part of our feminist history, and losing sight of this belonging leads us to consider them without correlating them to gender, species, race, humanity, (…) Mermaids force us to pay attention to the question of becoming, to that of life in threads of water that make the world permeable and connected, outside any fantasy of total purification. This should serve not as a model, but as a political, artistic, academic and, above all, ethical direction: becoming-sirens are intimately linked to our futures and to the reinvention of the subject in the age of our tragic ecologies”.

Kunsthal Mechelen presents the exhibition “The Last Place They Thought Of”, curated by Sorana Munsya.

The title is borrowed from the Afro-Canadian intellectual Katherine McKittrick, whose research explores the links between geography, race and marginalisation, particularly for black women.

This exhibition invites us to reflect on the possibility of a black conceptualisation of geography, in contrast to traditional notions of space. Traditional geography renders space transparent, taking into account only its rationality and Cartesian identity. By emphasising the visible and the measurable, this vision leaves to the margins the idea of a certain opacity of spaces and their narratives.

Drawing on the thinking and creations of these artists, “The Last Place They Thought Of”seeks to explore and rethink notions of territory and space from a black female perspective. It highlights stories of black female resistance and acts of reparation, while also reflecting on how the living experience of hostile spaces can produce practices of care and imagination. By taking social, cultural, political and imaginative dimensions seriously, the black female perspective can no longer be ignored when reading our spaces and understanding what’s at stake in our territories.

Among the artworks, Lungiswa Gqunta’s Tending to the Harvest of Dreams installation uses barbed wire wrapped in colourful textiles to explore the impact of Apartheid in South Africa, where even in its softened form, violence persists beneath a gentle and bittersweet surface. Similarly, Soñ Gweha’s Des Safous pour les Bayam-Sellam installation uses ceramic safou replicas and a soundscape combining revolutionary Mozambican songs with the artist’s conversations with market women to symbolise the interconnectedness and ongoing anti-colonial struggle between Africa and its diaspora.

This multidisciplinary exhibition, featuring video, photography, installation, sculpture, drawing, and painting, brings together 11 Belgium-based and international artists, including both existing works and new productions.

Additionally, the collective Black Archive has been invited by the curator to contribute with a film program that either responds to or provides an additional perspective on the exhibition’s themes. The program will be held at Filmhuis (Mechelen’s cultural center) and will launch on December 14, along with a series of talks featuring three of the exhibition’s artists: Gaëlle Choisne, Michèle Magema, and Soñ Gweha.

Sorana Munsya