De Brakke Grond presents the first exhibition in a new, three-year collaboration with Mu.ZEE. While the museum in Ostend is temporarily closed for renovation, Mu.ZEE continues to make its rich collection accessible through projects at home and abroad. This special collaboration with the Brakke Grond focuses on showing contemporary Flemish art in the Netherlands and each year offers a different Dutch curator the chance to offer a new perspective on the collection.
Kicking off this collaboration will be Suzanne Wallinga, curator and director of Museum Cobra. In collaboration with Ilse Roosens (curator Mu.ZEE) and Sophie Dogterom (artistic associate de Brakke Grond), she is putting together a group exhibition entitled What Cannot Be Held: Hedendaags stemmen uit de Belgische kunst on view at de Brakke Grond from 17 May to 6 July , 2025.
About the exhibition
In What Cannot Be Held, ten artists explore the vulnerable position of humans in a world that is constantly changing. The exhibition brings together diverse works that explore themes such as the instability of social relationships, the fragility of identity and the in-between space between past, present and imagination. In a time of shifting social structures and crumbling certainties, these works invite reflection on what it means to be human.
The artists invite you to reflect on vulnerability, the power of radical empathy and the tension between connection and loss. At the same time, they explore borderlands: between dream and reality, culture and nature, and the visible and the intangible.
With Danai Anesiadou, Anouk De Clercq, Lili Dujourie, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Valérie Mannaerts, Angyvir Padilla, Edith Dekyndt, Katja Mater, Tramaine de Senna, An van Dienderen en Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven.
A fresh look at a rich collection
Mu.ZEE manages a unique collection of more than 8,000 works that offer an overview of Belgian visual art since 1880. Over the next three years, a different Dutch curator will each time offer a new perspective on this collection, unlocking new stories and perspectives each time.
