WIELS Contemporary Art CentreForest
Ali Cherri: Soul Witness
First major gathering of Ali Cherri's work: film, sculpture, watercolour and installation on how state, army and museum write history. Includes the new film The Sentinel.
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At Sudan's Merowe Dam, seasonal brickmakers turn Nile mud into bricks, and seen from afar their bodies seem to disappear into the mud they shape. That three-screen film, Of Men and Gods and Mud, won Cherri a Silver Lion at Venice in 2022, and it opens a show about people posted to watch and wait.
The second floor adds The Watchman, a soldier on Cyprus's division line waiting for an enemy that never arrives, and clay figures fitted with fragments Cherri buys at auction. Upstairs is his new film, The Sentinel, a day with a sergeant at a French base. Writing for VRT, Chantal Pattyn called it the show's "absolute high point".
You finish in the Panorama Room, listening to an Arabic version of Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, sung by the film's bar singer. It's a heavy show about soldiers and borders, with three films to sit through. Tickets are €12, reductions from €8, and the last free late opening is 2 December, 18:00 to 21:00.
No te pierdas
Of Men and Gods and Mud
Look for the brickmakers on three screens in the first room, slowly coated in the same Nile mud they are shaping into bricks.
The Earth Heard Their Lament
Two gestural clay figures caught mid-mourning, made new for this show and set among hybrid sculptures built from masks and auction-house fragments.
The Sentinel
Sergeant Lafleur drifts from barracks routine through staged sets to a bar called Les Survivants; VRT's critic singles out Eric Cantona as the army doctor.
The oversize heads
Eyes closed and faces slack, they read as death masks but have the surface of moulded plastic toy soldiers, lined up on stands.
The Dreamer
A mostly clay figure in the Panorama Room stands with his back to you, face tilted slightly up, looking out over the city.
Ideal para
- Visitas de noche
- Por tu cuenta
- Entendidos
Mejor evitar si
You want something light: nearly every room deals with soldiers, borders or the aftermath of war.
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Créditos de las imágenes
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- Alone. Not even scared (to be scared!)Courtesy of Belgian Comic Strip Center
- House of Memory by Basil Al-Rawi© House of Memory - Basil Al-Rawi
- WIELS Contemporary Art CentreMarcwathieu / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0