Dear audience,

BANKET is back! Together, we’re opening the new season at the Brakke Grond with a festive evening full of art, performance, music, connection and of course food. Don’t expect an overly lavish banquet, but rather a gritty evening full of messiness and sweetness!

The main course of the evening is this year’s opening of Wayward Sanctuaries, a group exhibition exploring how artists today imagine and build new forms of home. During BANKET, the exhibition will not only be festively opened, but also activated through performances, guided tours and interventions by the artists themselves. Wayward Sanctuaries is a group exhibition by The Constant Now, Kunsthal Mechelen and the Brakke Grond, curated by Leana Boven.

In addition, artist Hannah Zaouad will be in residence at our venue during BANKET, working on their new performance Hoe zeg je “kom terug”? (How do you say “come back”?), together with Zindzi Tillot Owusu. They will open the doors of their studio and offer a glimpse into a poetic exploration of return, origins and the tourism industry in Morocco’s Rif region.

Tashattot Collective: Charbel Alkhoury & Christian Sleiman present a work centred around food and hospitality, with encounter and collectivity at its heart.

And we’ll finish with a grand dessert! Artists from the Wayward Sanctuaries exhibition will take over our Rode zaal with Wayward Live: an evening programme of text, performance and music. And as if that weren’t enough, this spectacular programme will culminate in a proper evening party.

Come in and stay awhile.
We’ll do the dishes ;-)

PROGRAMME
18:30 — Doors open

18:30–21:00 — Open Studio: Hoe zeg je "kom terug"? by Hannah Zaouad
(ongoing, open to visitors)

18:30–00:00 — Rose, Cumin, and Fire — Food installation by Tashattot Collective: Charbel Alkhoury & Christian Sleiman
(ongoing, open to visitors)

18:30 - 23:00 — Fundraiser for Matbakh Nafas (Nafas Kitchen)

18:50–19:20 — Wayward Live: FLOOR ROOF by Jiyoung Chu and Thuy Lê Thi Thu

19:20–19:40 — Opening: Welcome and speeches

19:40–20:00 — Wayward Live: Eyes on You, Eyes on Us by Kadia Doumbouya

20:15–20:45 — Artist tours by Elise el Yousfi and Jonabel Huavas

21:00–00:30 — Wayward Live: Music and performance programme in the Red Room
featuring artists Kadia Doumbouya, Luz Bran, Eveline Bumba and Kenny Mala Ngombe from the exhibition Wayward Sanctuaries

20:15–20:45 — Artist tours by Leana Boven and Joseph Thabang Palframan

23:00–00:30 — DJ set by Jo FLM & Toff Youth

Wayward Sanctuaries

Wayward Sanctuaries is a group exhibition that explores how artists today can imagine and construct new forms of home. In a world characterised by constant change and uncertainty, the participating artists use art, ritual and symbolic thinking to develop their own spaces of connection, resistance and imagination. The exhibition invites us to reflect on how community, memory and collective imagination take shape in times of transition.

The exhibition brings together work by fifteen artists living and working in Belgium: Elise El Yousfi, Collyns Charts, Jonabel Huavas, Aya Koné, Eveline Bumba, Joseph Palframan, Luz E.L. Bran, Hsiao-Hsi Chen, Charbel Alkhoury, Jiyoung Chu, Aïcha Ouattara, Emily Walter, Thuy Lê Thi Thu, Kenny Mala Ngombe and Kadia Doumbouya.

Wayward Sanctuaries was curated by Leana Boven as part of The Constant Now’s POC POC mentorship programme and is realised in collaboration with The Constant Now, Kunsthal Mechelen and the Brakke Grond.

During BANKET, Wayward Sanctuaries will be festively opened and activated through the Wayward Live programme.

Thuy Lê Thi Thu & Jiyoung Chu, FLOOR ROOF (2026)

19:00 — starting point: Nesplein / de Brakke Grond

The performance and installation FLOOR ROOF departs from the idea of carrying a home. Not as a fixed place, but as something assembled through dynamics, habits, and the quiet act of caring for one another.

FLOOR ROOF is a fragile attempt to remain close and connected, even if only for a moment, when the ground beneath us starts to shift. Thuy and Jiyoung explore the acts of packing and unpacking as a ritual within an unstable, constantly changing environment: a tension between holding on and letting go. Through this process, the artists search for ways to make space for bodies marked by distance and detachment.

Text and textiles are the central components of FLOOR ROOF. The performance moves through the different spaces of de Brakke Grond and, through these materials, enters into dialogue with public space, the black box, and the white cube.

The installation takes shape during the opening performance, remains on view throughout the exhibition, and is packed up again during the finissage.

Kadia Doumbouya, Eyes on You, Eyes on Us (2026)

19:40 Witte zaal

In many cultural contexts, the gaze is not neutral, but a force that acts upon the body. To be seen also means to be exposed.

In the performance Eyes on You, Eyes on Us, Kadia Doumbouya explores the gaze as a bodily experience. In spaces where someone becomes hyper-visible, the body responds before thought: it adapts, contracts and carries itself differently.

By placing animal eyes inside her mouth, Doumbouya attempts to hold on to this external force and negotiate with it. The gesture is slow and deliberate, maintaining a tension between violence and tenderness, while the body is unable to fully absorb or repel the gaze.

Cut-out heads and chili peppers, appearing to have been slightly lifted from the wall, intensify this tension. They reflect the persistence of the gaze and the continual back-and-forth between being seen and the need to protect oneself from it.

Luz, to swallow my grandmother’s tongue (2026)

21:00 Rode zaal

In to swallow my grandmother’s tongue (work in progress), Luz explores the relationship between voice, language and cultural memory. The performance builds on research into lost and transmitted languages and departs from Cabo Verdean Creole, a language Luz was never explicitly taught, but which was always present through children’s songs and family memories.

Through voice, looping, archival recordings and live sampling, the artist attempts to make the language sound again. It becomes a physical exercise in remembering, learning and failing: what happens when a language that remained hidden or unlearned begins to move through the mouth and voice once more?

The performance is a work in progress and forms part of Luz’ ongoing artistic research into voice, heritage, liberation and transience.

Eveline Bumba, HOERENPROJECT (2026)

21:30 Rode zaal

HOERENPROJECT is a poetry EP by Eveline Bumba, in which she spends 17 minutes smearing with words. The collection plays with banal language that can cut deeply, moving between directness, discomfort, humour and vulnerability.

For BANKET, Bumba presents the work again as an intimate and minimalist listening session, with musical accompaniment by Luz. Texts are performed live, fragments shift in form, and silences are given as much weight as words.

The EP is not simply performed, but broken open and rebuilt on the spot. Not neatly finished, but spilling over, as if the work is being born again in the moment.

Kenny Mala Ngombe, live set at delacroix’s pitch / mon sanctuaire.mp4 (2026)

22:00 Rode zaal

Kenny Mala Ngombe presents an experimental live set that builds on the music and texts emerging from his work in the exhibition.

Alongside existing songs and texts, he introduces new loops and noise in a live performance, further opening up the visual work.

At the centre is the idea of the sanctuary as something more than a physical place: it can be a feeling, an experience, people, solitude, or a return to a memory. At the same time, delacroix’s pitch examines the pressure of a cultural landscape in which art is shaped by expectations, industry and market logic.

The live set brings these different layers together and searches for the tension between sanctuary, vulnerability and the world beyond it.

Jo FLM & Toff Youth, DJ set

23:00–00:30 Rode zaal

Wayward Live concludes with a DJ set by close friends and selectors Jo FLM and Toff Youth, gradually opening up the intimacy of the performances into a more danceable, collective gathering. Jo FLM is a Kosovar Albanian DJ and curator known for her low-end pressure and restless approach to rhythm and emotion. Toff Youth is a multidisciplinary artist and MC moving freely between music, visual work and other forms of storytelling. Moving between bashment, dub and other heavy sounds, their set carries the evening to higher grounds.

Tashattot Collective: Charbel Alkhoury & Christian Sleiman, Rose, Cumin, and Fire

18:30 - 00:00 (op = op) — Grote zaal 

For their inaugural project in Amsterdam, Tashattot invites artist and cultural worker Charbel Alkhoury and artist and cook Christian Sleiman to join the BANKET opening season at Brakke Grond with a food-focused installation. Together, they invite us to gather around kibbeh; a dish with a spell of its own.

Kibbeh is a staple across Bilad al-Sham, with countless variations found throughout the region, yet all share the same basic structure: an outer shell of burghul mixed with meat, potato, or pumpkin, wrapped around a filling that might be spinach and chickpeas, meat, fish. The version changes with the region, the occasion, and the season but for us, this dish has always been something more than food. We grew up watching the women in our families make it, each preparation its own kind of spell.

For Brakke Grond, they've turned to the version of kibbeh made in Southern Lebanon, a potion that calls for a specific spice blend native to the region: kamouneh. Traditionally ground by hand on a stone slab, in a gesture of respect for the earth that gave rise to its ingredients, kamouneh brings together dried cumin, Damask rose petals, peppers, cinnamon, cloves, and marjoram. This preparation fills the air with the region’s warmth, creating an earthy, savory essence that elevates kibbeh, vegetables, and meats alike. While every family guards its own variation, cumin remains the anchor—giving the blend its name—surrounded by herbs and petals that create a communion with the land.

Tashattot Collective

Tashattot (Arabic for dispersion) is an art collective based in Belgium dedicated to supporting visual artists, musicians, film makers and cultural practitioners at large, originally from the SWANA region and currently “dispersed” in Europe. The collective aims at creating opportunities and collaborations for these expatriate artists.

Hannah Zaouad, Hoe zeg je “kom terug”?

18:30–21:00 — Steegzaal

During their residency, Hannah Zaouad is working on their new performance Hoe zeg je “kom terug”? together with Zindzi Tillot Owusu. During BANKET, they will open the doors of their studio and offer a glimpse into their research on return, origins and the tourism industry in Morocco’s Rif region.

Hoe zeg je “kom terug”? is a poetic documentary performance about the tourism industry in the Rif region of Morocco, the country of Hannah’s ancestors. Using, among other things, cassette recordings, they explore questions such as: What does your presence mean in the landscape you visit? What impact does it have on the local population? How do you travel to the country of your ancestors?

The Rif has become a transit zone between Europe and Africa. On the one hand, the region has been deeply shaped by migration to Europe in the 1960s. On the other, tourism is now developing there, driven in large part by the children of these migrant workers who are “returning.”

In this performance, Hannah raises pressing questions about home, origins and appropriation. Who has a right to land that belongs to no one? What does it mean to belong somewhere when the place itself is constantly changing?