Tomorrow begins with a different way of seeing

The Muhka collection at Antwerp Symphony Orchestra

How does the way we look shape the world we see? Artist Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven and curator Jan De Vree have brought together works by ten artists from the Muhka collection to explore this question. The works are on display at the Elisabeth Center, the business lounge of the Koningin Elisabethzaal, alongside Morgen, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra’s new season.

With Morgen, the orchestra explores a future that begins with paying attention to one another, the world around us and new perspectives. The artworks bring their own way of looking to this theme.

The starting point is Attributen en Substantie (1993) by Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven. This painting brings together the body, space, image and language. It combines an improvised structure on which a nude model posed during a drawing class with interiors, female figures and words such as shape and control and barriers and openings. The blue sheets of Plexiglas were first shattered, then glued back together.

This tension between control and openness runs throughout the display. Gordon Matta-Clark cuts openings directly into an existing building. ORLAN uses her own body to measure public space afresh. Hugo Roelandt shows how a frame determines the way we look at a body. Charline Tyberghein makes the familiar just strange enough to make us look again. In Panamarenko’s work, scientific theory and imagination come together in a speculative universe.

The ten artworks reveal how our gaze is shaped. The spaces we move through, the images we recognise and the structures we take for granted all influence how we understand the world. Shifting those structures creates room for another way of seeing.

In this way, the works resonate with Morgen, the theme of the orchestra’s season. They offer no fixed image of the future. Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, too, adopts an approach that leaves room for what might yet emerge. Perhaps a gentler future begins by asking whether we can learn to see differently.

A collection takes on new meanings

At the Elisabeth Center, the works are shown in a setting centred on music and listening. Works by Nel Aerts, Gordon Matta-Clark, Michèle Matyn, Lieven Nollet, ORLAN, Panamarenko, Hugo Roelandt, Charline Tyberghein, Raoul Van den Boom and Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven bring another way of thinking to the season’s theme.

For Muhka, this display shows how a collection takes on new meanings when works are shown in a different context. The collection is not a fixed whole, but a public resource that continually forms new connections with artists, audiences, the city and society. Working together allows us to share knowledge, artworks and perspectives.

Morgen also becomes an exercise in looking: at what is there, what might shift and what is not yet visible.