Diasporalia

Twelve bronze mattresses arranged in two rows in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp. The art installation Diasporalia by Koen Theys, in the theme of the Baroque year, is dramatic and immediately raises questions. What happened here? Where are the people to whom these things belonged? Diasporalia brings the refugee crisis uncomfortably close but, through extreme stylization and aestheticization, also keeps it at a distance.

With twelve poems written especially for this booklet by Dimitri Verhulst, a letter to the artist from SMAK director Philippe Van Cauteren and essays by art philosopher Kathy de Nève and Bart Paepen, pastor of Antwerp Cathedral.