Cultural Compass: A refugee’s story on stage, two photography openings and how shame speaks
Every Sunday, Belga English picks its favourite events from the cultural agenda. This week: The story of a Somalian refugee comes to La Monnaie, FOMU presents stirring photos from the birth of photography paired with modern day storytelling through images and four artists illuminate the power of the unspoken.
Ali, 31 October until 9 November, La Monnaie, Brussels
A powerful new opera tells the extraordinary true story of Ali Abdi Omar, who fled Somalia at just fourteen and made the perilous journey from the Horn of Africa to Brussels via the deadly Libyan migration route. Along the way, amid hardship and loss, he found fleeting moments of friendship and hope. After two years on the road, Ali arrived alone at Brussels South station in 2019.
The opera transforms Ali’s odyssey into a moving exploration of migration, resilience and global inequality. The libretto was developed in collaboration with Ali himself, while the score blends symphonic music, percussion and electronics to capture the shifting soundscape of his journey.
When this opera first premiered in collaboration with KVS, the Brussels city theatre last year, the company noted, “If you were born in Belgium, you can travel visa-free to 84 per cent of countries worldwide. With a Somali passport, only 16 per cent.” Through Ali’s story, the opera confronts not only personal courage but also the structural divides that shape who is free to move and who is forced to flee.
Early Gaze, Unseen Photography From the 19th Century, until 1 March, FOMU, Antwerp
EARLY GAZE is a major exhibition tracing the emergence of photography in 19th-century Belgium and its profound impact on how we see and are seen. Bringing together rare and previously unseen works from archives and private collections, the show offers a revealing look at photography’s dual role as both artistic innovation and instrument of power.
EARLY GAZE explores how early photographic practices, which range from the first mug shots to scientific and medical imagery, helped define identity, authority, and national belonging. What began as a technological marvel quickly became a means of classification and control, shaping the visual language of a young Belgian state.
The exhibition also reconsiders forgotten pioneers and untold stories, linking the 19th-century “gaze” to contemporary debates around image-making, consent and representation.
Alongside the exhibition, FOMU offers workshops where visitors can experiment with historical techniques such as cyanotype, ferrotype and wet collodion printing. Guided tours by curators further illuminate the complex history behind the images.
Danial Shah: Becoming, Belonging and Vanishing, until 1 April, FOMU, Antwerp
Photographer and filmmaker Danial Shah presents Becoming, Belonging and Vanishing, an exhibition rooted in his artistic research into the photo studios of his hometown, Quetta, Pakistan. Once filled with hand-painted backdrops and theatrical props, these studios have transformed into digital spaces where imagination continues to shape identity.
Through photography and film, Shah reveals how people use these studios to navigate shifting dreams, social constraints and the search for belonging. His work captures the tension between disappearance and reinvention in an era where physical realities blend with digital possibilities.
The exhibition, free to visit on the first floor, is part of Shah’s doctoral research at Sint Lucas School of Arts Antwerp and the University of Antwerp, in collaboration with ARIA.
(Un)Shame, until 4 January, GUM, Ghent
What we are told not to talk about often becomes taboo. Something that must remain hidden and evolves into a source of shame. An exhibition featuring four artists delves into these silences, exposing the ways in which shame is shaped by power and social norms. Each artist unravels a different thread of what we conceal and why.
In Vulva Obscura, Belgian photographer Hanne Lamon confronts one of society’s deepest taboos: the vulva. Using both Polaroid and homemade camera obscura techniques, she photographed a hundred people with vulvas, revealing the striking diversity of a body part long obscured by shame and ignorance. Her accompanying collection of personal stories breaks the silence that has persisted even within medical science.
French artist Ugo Woatzi’s Herbe folle draws on the metaphor of “wild weeds” to question hierarchies that label certain identities as deviant. Linking plants to queer experience, Woatzi reclaims the term “folle” to celebrate difference and resilience.
In Je Me Souviens, Franco-Scottish artist Loïs Soleil presents fragmented images and memories that testify to the patriarchal violence embedded in everyday life. Her quiet, intimate works expose the weight of stories too often dismissed or suppressed.
Meanwhile, Italian artist Giulia Cauti transforms trauma into ritual. In TRAUMA(tanz), participants engage with wearable bioplastic sculptures that symbolise healing in motion. Together, these works invite visitors to listen, to name what was once unspeakable and to find freedom in confronting what we hide.
Ongoing events
Antwerp
Women’s Business / Business Women
Donas, Archipenko & La Section d'Or: Enchanting Modernism
GIRLS: On Boredom, Rebellion and Being In-Between
Eugeen Van Mieghem: City in Motion
Brussels
Bruxelles, la Congolaise
Loisirs-Plezier: Brussels 1920-1940
John Baldessari: Parables, Fables and Other Tall Tales
MAURICE: Tristesse et rigolade
FireLuz y sombra: Goya and Spanish Realism
Ghent
Beauty as Resistance
Fairground Wonders
Stephan Vanfleteren: Transcripts of a Sea
Marc De Blieck: Point de voir
Hasselt
Rococo Reboot
Michael Beutler
Kortrijk
Rekindling
Leuven
Ecstasy & Orewoet
Grace Schwindt: A History of Touch
(MOH)
#FlandersNewsService | A still from the opera Ali © PHOTO LA MONNAIE
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