10 Years of S.M.A.K. Moves
3.May.26
S.M.A.K. Moves is the museum’s participatory platform. For ten years now, we have been bringing people and art closer together through projects based on doing, thinking, and experiencing together. Starting in the autumn of 2025, we celebrate this anniversary with a special exhibition project at the museum.
At the heart of this exhibition are encounters and collaboration. In two rooms, we alternately give the floor to long-standing and new partners. They present their work, organise activities, or use the museum as a workspace. At the same time, we also invite visitors to reflect with us on the future: what does the collection mean today, and how can we co-create a new kind of museum?
In the final room, you can find the pavilion Tussen Piraten en Papegaaien (Between Pirates and Parrots) by artist Nico Dockx, VOET Architectuur and Studio Zuidervaart. This mobile structure was developed in 2023, commissioned by Be-Part (Waregem), as a space for exchange. Like the S.M.A.K. Moves programme, it changes along with what happens in and around it.
Between the galleries, the flags of Road of Change flutter, an experiential learning project in which young people, during a road trip, were challenged to put themselves in the shoes of people on the run. Visitors can not only (re)discover the flags from the 2019 project, but also design their own flag, continuing the initiative in their own way.
Olivier Donnet
10 Years of S.M.A.K. Moves kicks off with a presentation of “Zine Zine Zine.” ZINE ZINE is a magazine created for and by the residents of the Nieuwe Wandeling prison in Ghent. Together with the print studio Topo Copy, five artistic publications were produced and distributed both inside and outside the prison.
In addition, space is given to “Light Sensitivity”, a long-term photography project in collaboration with photographer Anja Hellebaut of mentormentor and the Dr. Guislain Psychiatric Centre, PC Gent-Sleidinge, and Karus. The concept is simple: participants visit the museum, each receives a camera, and then spend three weeks working in the museum to create their own series of photographs. The results are both direct and deeply personal, with the camera functioning at times as a shield, and at others as a window onto the world. On site, they work towards a photo exhibition inspired by the museum, its collection, and its architecture.
Later partner projects by: Zonnehoeve, Duo2Gent, Academie voor Podiumkunsten, Bazart, The Constant Now, and more.
