Antje Majewski and Paweł Freisler — Apple. An Introduction (over and over and once again)

+++ This three-part exhibition ran from 29 February 2024 to 5 January 2025. +++

The group exhibition Apple. An Introduction (over and over and once again) took place in 2024 as part of Muhka’s Superhost programme. Developed in collaboration with artists, pomologists, activists, and scientists, the project explored the apple as both an art object and a symbol in the broader context of biodiversity, ecology, and cultural meaning-making. It began with questions such as: How many apple varieties exist? Where do wild apple trees grow? What does the freedom of apples mean?

Conceptual artist Pawel Freisler and artist Antje Majewski were at the heart of this long-running and circular apple project. Through artworks, texts, films, and participatory workshops, they used the apple as an entry point into complex ecological and societal questions. Children and young people were actively involved, notably through workshops led by Plukgeluk, culminating in the planting of apple trees at schools across Antwerp.

Three parts

The exhibition unfolded in three parts over the course of 2024, each highlighting a different aspect of the apple as an artistic and symbolic motif.

The first part introduced the apple as a fruit rich in cultural and symbolic meanings. Featuring works by Chantal Akerman, Jimmie Durham, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Pawel Freisler, Antje Majewski, and Kasper de Vos, this chapter celebrated the interconnectedness, generosity, and beauty of the natural world to which we also belong.

The second part of the project introduced us to a deeper knowledge about apples. Antje Majewski’s film brought us to the origin of Apples in Kazakhstan. The Superhost Space hosted the Alma Museum, literally ‘Apple Museum’ from Almaty.  Joris de Rycke found wildgrowing trees near Antwerp and made them into varieties.  Read more on the second season of Superhost 2024.

The third and final part celebrated the harvest season, offering fresh perspectives on growth and renewal, with works by Setareh Alipour, Ada Van Hoorebeke,  Verena and Han Kruysse.

The presentation included:

Ada Van Hoorebeke presents The Bees’ Compound at the Superhost space, a large-scale installation of textiles displaying patterns and shapes reminiscent of enlarged honeycombs. The textiles are dyed with apple bark for the yellow hues and with Mexican bloodwood or logwood for the violet shades. These colors, yellow and purple, are ones that bees can see and smell vividly. The installation invites visitors not only to observe other species but to see and feel as they do, understanding that we are all part of the same ecosystem. We pollinate with our fingertips, harvest, and store in cupboards constructed like the lens of an eye. We take the last fruits of summer and transform them into luminous, delicious treasures, hidden from the sun, slowly fading but intended to sustain us through the winter. As the days grow longer, we can produce again—abundantly, lushly, and freely!

Setareh Alipour’s Lamp, crafted from Apple-Fruitleather (Persian: Lavashak), transcends its function as a mere light source, transforming into a sensory time machine. The material’s gummy bear-like texture and fruity scent evoke the sweet and sour nostalgia of childhood. When illuminated, the Lavashak panels radiate like stained glass, casting warm hues of amber and gold, and turning the everyday into the extraordinary. Each panel acts as a diary entry—some vibrant, others faded—resonating with Derrida’s concept of différance, where meaning is perpetually deferred. The apple form abstractly connects the material back to its origins, intertwining tradition with contemporary symbolism. This work serves as a tactile narrative, bridging past and present while challenging perceptions of time and memory.

Pawel Freisler’s carved apples are covered with tiny patterns. His photos bring us close to these small wonders that are artworks and at the same time part of nature. Preserved in a vitrine, they are nevertheless changing as all organic materials do, and remind us of an end that can also be a beginning.

Verena and Han Kruysse made very inventive collages from their breakfast apples and photographed these ephemeral inventions over some years.

Two Apple Ornaments, painted by Antje Majewski, can be seen on the walls. The ornaments had been collaboratively made by participants during previous projects. Antje Majewski’s video “Apple Trees for Cities” shows the making of Apple Ornaments and the planting of apple trees in different countries, with the help of volunteers, citizen’s groups, schools or activists.

The community garden activist organization Plukgeluk lead apple grafting workshops for the Apple project in Antwerp. Their work with teenagers can be seen on a second monitor. The grafted trees will be planted in Antwerp schools in autumn.

The walls in the first space are covered with drawings and paintings, made by children and teenagers in Thun (CH), Almaty (KZ), and Antwerp.

About the artists

Pawel Freisler is an experimental conceptual artist – day and night. In the 1970s he emigrated from Poland. He lives in Malmö and works in Trelleborg (Sweden). Information about his work consists mainly of anecdotal stories, such as abandoning active participation in the art scene or taking up gardening, often filled with gossip, rumours, fairy tales, legend, fabrications –  fabrications or personal connections with the artist.

Antje Majewski’s practice comprises paintings, video works, texts and performances, and is informed by anthropological and philosophical questions. Majewski questions objects, territories, and plants, and focuses on research into alternate systems of knowledge, storytelling, and the potential of transformative processes – with a particular interest in cultural and geobotanical migration. An integral part of Majewski’s aristic process is her recurring collaboration with other artists, ecological groups, and urbanism-focused collectives. Since 2014 she has been working together with Polish artist Pawel Freisler on the apple project.

Setareh Alipour is a multidisciplinary artist and curator currently residing between Frankfurt and Potsdam. Her artistic practice fluidly transitions between installation and drawing, with a focus on the social body, relationships, and memory, all deeply rooted in psychoanalysis and the humanities. Alipour’s work explores the complexities of human connections, weaving together autobiographical elements with broader societal themes. Through intimate family moments, repurposed everyday materials, and site-specific installations, she evokes a sense of care, tenderness, and the fleeting nature of time.

Ada Van Hoorebeke lives and works in Berlin and Bruges. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts in Antwerp in 2006. Over the past 18 years, she has dedicated herself to researching textile dyeing techniques, with recent years focused on cultivating plants for natural dye production to inspire her installations. Her artistic practice includes long-term collaborations and educational sessions across Europe, Gambia, Indonesia, and Japan. Van Hoorebeke has been an Artist in Residence at WIELS Contemporary Art Center in Brussels (2010), R.U. in New York City (2017), and Terraform Samsø (2021). She was also a recipient of the Berlin Art Prize in 2019. Her works have been exhibited internationally at venues such as Mu.ZEE in Ostend, WIELS in Brussels, the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York, Kunsthal Gent, Heidelberger Kunstverein, and BankART in Yokohama.

Plukgeluk is an Antwerp-based organisation. Their mission is to introduce students to the beauty and wisdom of nature through experiential learning, and through growing love for nature so that they genuinely understand and cherish where food comes from and how ecosystems function.

About Superhost

Superhost is a programme investing in a yearlong relationship between an artist or collective practice, the museum, and its participating communities, and supporting the production of artworks, performative or discursive creations. One artist or collective is invited to be M HKA’s Superhost every year. By embracing the ambiguous and interrelated dynamics of hospitality – in which the host is always a guest; the guest always also a host –  Muhka affirms a longing for increased institutional transformation, permeability, and exchange. The invitation materialises freely, both in the museum’s top-floor gallery spaces and as programmes of discursive and performative events.

Superhost 2024 is part of the Museum of the Commons (2023-2026), a project by the museum federation L’Internationale, of which Muhka is a member. The Museum of the Commons weaves together three thematic strands: Climate; Situated Organisations; and Past in the Present. All three align with the major challenges contemporary societies face. The ‘climate’ theme revolves around the current planetary climate crisis, the sustainability of institutional, artistic, and cultural practices and processes, and the urgency to transform our political processes, societies, cultures, and lifestyles more ecologically.