Featuring work by Haseeb Ahmed, Rebecca Jane Arthur, Marcin Dudek, Ermias Kifleyesus, Camille Orso Caël (fka - Camille Picquot), Angyvir Padilla, Yoel Pytowski, Mostafa Saifi Rahmouni.
With a special contribution by Lot Lemm.
Opening: Saturday, June 14, 2025, 15:00- 19:00
Exhibition: June 14- July 12, 2025
A West African parakeet perched in a cold Ixelles treetop is as Belgian as any other Brusselaar – unexpectedly, and entirely. Though you wouldn’t have found these birds in Belgium before the 1970s, today they’re among the most common in Brussels, right after pigeons and sparrows. After more than half a century, aren’t these parakeets as Belgian as they are African or Asian? Are the dozens clustered in clumpy nests above Flagey truly “from” here?
“Being from” is slippery to define. Like birds, and most other species, humans migrate. We are shaped as much by the places we leave as by those we arrive in. Each day, we build the spaces around us with fragments of our past, weaving the present landscape from a vast and tangled system of roots. In the great stew of contemporary life, people carry many origins within them; perhaps it is more accurate to say that a place is "from" its inhabitants, rather than the other way around.
Brussels is a mid-sized city sculpted by immense diversity, intimate contrasts, and contradictions so vivid they verge on the surreal. More than 100 languages are spoken here, by people hailing from over 180 countries. Nearly half the city’s population was born abroad, and among those born here, many trace family histories that stretch across continents. So what does it mean to be a Brusselaar (or a Belgian) today? What makes a parakeet, or a piece of art, Belgian?
"Electric Green Parakeets (a Celebration of Migration)" brings together eight artists who were born elsewhere but have made Brussels their home. Their voices have become part of this city’s evolving landscape, slowly shaped by the influence of Belgian art history and sharpened through sustained engagement with the contemporary ecosystem of residencies, institutions, academies, galleries, and civic life. They are not just “from” somewhere else – they are also shaping where we are now, and what will become of it. These artists are brought together here, not as part of a researched or thematic exhibition, but as a celebration of migration and the city we’ve all come to share. Though their practices unfold in diverse forms, they converge in a quiet reckoning with home, its fragility and resilience, its hauntings and layered histories.
The artists in this exhibition have developed their practices within the context of a wide range of influential Belgian academies, residency programs, and institutions. These include ENSAV La Cambre (Brussels), KASK & Conservatorium (Ghent), HISK – Higher Institute for Fine Arts (Ghent), LUCA School of Arts (Brussels), Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Sint-Lukas Brussels, UCL (Brussels and Louvain-la-Neuve), and the WIELS Centre for Contemporary Art (Brussels), where several of the artists have participated in its noted residency program. Their work has also been shown and supported by prominent Belgian institutions such as WIELS, BOZAR – Centre for Fine Arts (Brussels), M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, S.M.A.K. – Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Ghent), FOMU – Foto Museum Antwerp, IKOB – Museum of Contemporary Art (Eupen), BPS22 – Art Museum of the Hainaut Province (Charleroi), L’ISELP (Brussels), Kunsthal Extra City (Antwerp), and the artist-run platforms Auguste Orts and Komplot.
In addition to their strong presence within the Belgian cultural landscape, the artists' works have also been exhibited extensively abroad. They have shown at institutions and events such as the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art (Bucharest), Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw), Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), Kunstverein Friedrichshafen (Germany), the Austrian Film Museum and Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna), Museum Bärengasse (Zurich), Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, the Istanbul Experimental Film Festival, the Sharjah Biennial, the 15th Gwangju Biennale (Korea), FRONT Triennial (Cleveland), the Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (Sweden), La Triennale di Milano, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Warehouse (Dallas), and many others.
