Exhibition Anne Wetsi Mpoma

The starting point for this exhibition is to find out what Black people all over the world dream of. The hypothesis is that Black artists and intellectuals are confronted with the task of reconstructing a real and imaginary territory in an ever-changing world. 
 
Edward Said explained that the imperialist conquest has necessitated a historical negationism towards the population. In this logic, the idea of a lost paradise becomes inherent in the discourse on African peoples. From the first encounters with Europeans on the African continent, the latter have behaved like colonists. They decreed that African cultures were to disappear, where white civilisation was to be adopted.

Thus, the colonial process disenfranchises the colonised from their own land as well as from their own bodies, appearing as a blank page. It is this blank page that needs to be rewritten through dreams. What the dream also allows is to go beyond real or figurative limits to project oneself into a better future and on a collective level. 
 
This exhibition shows how some artists are responding to the contemporary challenges faced by the world and through dreams.

Anne Wetsi Mpoma is an art historian, independent curator and decolonised thinker. In October of 2019, she founded the Wetsi Art Gallery, a space that takes the lack of visibility of certain types of artists as its starting point. The space is dedicated to a revaluation of artistic productions from the African diaspora in its widest sense. From 2014 to 2017, Wetsi was part of the African diaspora expert group consulted by the AfricaMuseum to co-create its new permanent exhibition. She is also part of the group of experts writing the first report for the federal parliamentary commission tasked with an inquiry into Belgium’s colonial past.