Renowned artist Otobong Nkanga has come to Bruges this summer, creating an ‘exhibition landscape’ in the heart of the ancient city. Underneath the Shade We Lay Grounded (25-06-2022 to 25-09-2022) is hosted by, or, more accurately, embedded in the Saint John’s Hospital Museum, a former hospital ward and place of care for six centuries from the 14th century to the 1970s.
Here, where nuns gave food, spiritual and medicinal care, Nkanga explores themes of grounding and regrowth, loss, healing and regeneration. She does so through a network of artworks: islands of Carrara marble stones; carpets and tapestries; ceramics and glasswork; poetry, aroma and soundscape, all interwoven with archeology, relics and artworks she has chosen from the Museum’s collection – some of which have never before been displayed to the public.
Nkanga invites visitors to take a pilgrimage through this artscape, where the horizontal and our connection with the earth take centre stage. Visitors flow on pathways through a vista of white stones and richly-coloured threads. The scent of coffee, herbs and spices – the memory of Bruges’s trading heyday – and the vaulted wooden ceilings in this cavernous hospital ward give a sacral quality to the experience.
‘It invites you to let go,’ I was told by curator Michel Dewilde, who worked intensively with Otobong Nkanga over nine weeks in the run-up to the exhibition.
She really goes for flow. There are archipelagos of white stones and it’s like a stream of meditation and contemplation. Let loose! She was adamant to have as little text as possible.
Michel Dewilde
Underneath the Shade We Lay Grounded represents the beginning of a new policy by Bruges Museums, who are calling it a ‘new step, or new wave’. The 13 museums across Bruges will be joined in 2025 by a new 10,000m2 kunsthal called BRUSK, able to host large-scale contemporary artworks, with about five to six shows a year. Greater numbers of contemporary acquisitions are planned and the balance of old to modern to contemporary exhibitions will be 30-30-30, giving the contemporary arts more breathing space in Bruges.
Indeed, the only reason St John’s Hospital was able to host an installation of the size and scope of Nkanga’s work is because the building is due to be completely renovated and was being completely emptied. It fits Nkanga’s universe aptly to think that, out of that building work – that in-between moment of urban and cultural regeneration – comes an opening for artistic dialogue.
For the museum it’s an exciting time as they’ve been keen to collaborate with the Antwerp-based Nigerian-Belgian for a while. They gave her the run of the museum, and all its spaces and the whole collection.
‘She really went for it,’ said Dewilde. ‘She literally went into the archives and the depot and chose works for her thematic approaches and stories. Some of them had never been seen. The way she worked with the graves of the nuns was with a local floral artist to make flowers that connected it to her giant orange tapestry and triangulated them with one of our most seminal artworks, View of the Hospital Wards, 1778 by Jan Beerblock.’
It’s moving to stand before View of the Hospital Wards, in the very space it depicts, once filled with wooden hospital beds, and know the graves of the nurses pictured in it lay just behind you. The ‘giant orange tapestry’ Dewilde described is entitled Unearthed – Sunlight and gives comfort – its threads providing a home for living plants.
Don’t miss the attic space, where you can find the sculpture Anamnesis, and a ‘tideline’ of fragrant coffee, herbs and spices traces a seismic crack in the wall. This symbol of Bruges’ past as a trading hub is looked over by a second tapestry and a second perspective on Europe’s trading history. Entitled Unearthed – Abyss, it shows an underwater world where limbs lie on the seabed. Could they be those of the slaves thrown overboard on their way to the continent?
Outside, visitors can see pleasing squares of fragrant planting – the remains of the sisters’ Herb Garden, where Otobong Nkanga wrote five poems. You can also visit the old pharmacy, filled with apothecary jars and measuring instruments, in a building with beautiful ancient cloisters nearby.
While you’re there…
One of the great things about Bruges is how intimate and easily walkable its art and museum scene is. The combination of historic sites and a rich collection of over 75,000 artefacts from Flemish Primitives to silverwork, and classic fine arts – and now more contemporary work too – means there’s something for everyone.
The Salon Arents is an open-to-all meeting house where events inspired by current themes and temporary expos take place.
And if you really want to get off the beaten track, try surprising yourself with a Street Art trail. Or why not discover The Bridges, a series of murals created in 2020 by the Bruges artist Wietse and his collaborators, with birds, fish and other wildlife are celebrated.
