We ended last year promising to start 2022 with a big bang while secretly preparing for the Seduzione exhibition in the Uffizi. There, between the Old Masters, my works launched a global call to discover the new and the unthinkable, and map an international route of hope through a Cosmopolitan Renaissance. The message was unequivocal: we must collectively search for a new reality; we must make a world in which we can live together in symbiosis and harmony: we must aspire to a global rebirth, a Cosmopolitan Renaissance.
In the following months, many exhibitions, performances, and projects followed in various countries, from Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, over Zimbabwe and Uganda to Cuba. There were scores of lectures, cosmocafés, debates, and expeditions. Uffizi and the Burning Falls spinoff at the Biennial of Venice were followed by two summer projects involving younger generations. The second chapter of The Unthinkable Experiment (Chapter Generosity) at LABIOMISTA and Patchwork II at Watou Arts Festival offered new insights and perspectives that broadened our worldview. The young ones’ creations of hope were an act of pure generosity. Also the Cosmogolem continued its journey around the world, aiming for Uganda and Sri Lanka to build platforms for the voices of the new generations. Our fall season, honoured with a solo-exhibition on Belgium soil, was a unique opportunity to reveal precisely what the Cosmopolitan Renaissance entails through a series of surrealistic performances and an expansive exhibition of the same name. At the end of the year, my exhibition, Medusa’s Hope in Havana, clarified why we had to launch the Cosmopolitan Renaissance. In a country isolated from the rest of the world, suffering greatly from the effects of COVID-19 and international isolation, I was offered the beautiful space of Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana to show life’s worth, the incredibly diverse, multidimensional, and magical yet vulnerable layer of wonder that covers our tiny planet—a cosmic gift. We hope to keep spreading this narrative in 2023, together with you, your perspectives, hopes, and love. Koen, Chido & Team
Read the full newsletter online
or watch our 2022recap movie;
Comments