How do we imagine living environments in a world facing planetary shifts and ecological challenges? Magical Realism: Imagining Natural Dis/order brings together over thirty artists at WIELS and argos, offering new ideas and perspectives on our relationship with nature. The exhibition is an invitation to move away from systems driven by endless growth and resource extraction, encouraging connection with the many entanglements that shape our planet.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the artistic and literary genre known as magical realism, which is characterised by its infusion of worlds of magic, dreams and myth into mundane narratives—creating stories that redefine the boundaries of reality. The exhibition looks at how the porosity between ‘magic’ and ‘reality’ may open up spaces for other horizons to emerge in response to proliferating monocultures, disposable life, and climate transformation.

When the world of science and hard facts has been torn apart from the world of magic and intuition, how to reconcile this fracture, what traces does it leave and how do we repair it? The exhibition navigates these questions through works that shape worlds via painting, moving image, sound and installation. They engage with different spaces, from the cosmos and its galaxies to the scientist’s lab; matters such as bodies of water, bacterial skins or 3D prints; and geologic processes surfacing through the underground rumbling of the earth or the noise of a sinking city. The artists navigate different, complementary and contradictory ways of relating to ecosystems and myths of the “natural” environment, seeking refuge in dreams and in the raw matter and bare life of the world. At the confluence of analytic and speculative tools, Magical Realism gestures towards restoring connections in a biosphere exhausted by exploitation, dispossession and debt.

Through exhibitions at WIELS and argos, a publication and a live program including workshops, talks, walks, film screenings and performances, Magical Realism reflects an ecology that addresses both the aesthetic implications of our relationship with ‘nature’ and the natural worlds, and their tipping point, as well as the social, economic and scientific implications of exploring and shifting our conceptions of the planet. 

Participating artists: Bianca Baldi, Minia Biabiany, Gaëlle Choisne, Ade Darmawan, Edith Dekyndt, Suzanne Husky, Saodat Ismailova, Suzanne Jackson, Ann Veronica Janssens, Joan Jonas, Pauline Julier, Barbara & Michael Leisgen, Annemarie Maes, Jumana Manna, Marisa Merz, Jota Mombaça, Nour Mobarak, Mountaincutters, Otobong Nkanga & Kicsy Abreu Stable, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Annie Ratti, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Maarten Vanden Eynde & Edmond Musasa Leu N’seya, Cecilia Vicuña, Adrián Villar Rojas.

Curators:  Sofia Dati, Helena Kritis, Dirk Snauwaert