Cul-de-sac

eine Kollaboration mit Level Five & Alte Tankstelle Deutz

In Cul-de-sac, a series of organic and hand-crafted expressions come together to navigate the notion of collectivity from multiple perspectives. The exhibition questions dominant ideologies that privilege materialism, reinforce human supremacy, and uphold the sovereignty of one group or species over others. Hierarchical frameworks have led to devastating consequences, and today they continue to feed apocalyptic imaginaries of the end of the world. In contrast, Cul-de-sac opens up a space for imagining interconnected, and co-created futures, hinging around collectivity. Building on feminist heritage, particularly ecofeminism, the five artists in this exhibition also believe that the struggle against inequality and hierarchy can unite efforts to combat both social discrimination and the domination of nature. For them, collaborative is not just an artistic methodology but also an ethical stance: one that seeks to re-weave the fabric of relational life—across humans, nonhumans, ecologies, and histories.
In this exhibition, the title Cul-de-sac foregrounds these dynamics onto a spatial paradox: a dead-end that is also a shared square where families meet, linger, and exchange. At a time when our world feels increasingly enclosed—by environmental collapse, rising authoritarianism, and extractive systems—the cul-de-sac becomes a metaphor for reimagining collectivity at the edge of crisis. Rather than an end, it is a gathering point , a pause where we hold space for transformation and solidarity, sourcing energy for imaginative visions while navigating new forms of (inter)action within the world we inhabit.
Our curatorial imagination draws from Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, in which she proposes an alternative to the hero’s journey—a narrative centered not on conquest but on care and continuity. She reminds us that before the weapon, we created the basket: the tool that gathers, holds, and sustains. This metaphor guides the exhibition as a whole. Coming from diverse parts of the world and gathering in Brussels, the artists bring with them their own "carrier bags"—filled with elements that reflect and engage issues post-migration identity, ecological mimicry, indigenous resistance, energy infrastructures, and feminist reimaginings of tradition(s). These personal histories remind us that in the face of ruptures, collectivity becomes not (only) a celebration of difference, but the practice through which new forms of relational life can emerge, to counter this human-dominated western Western-centric world.