Darly Benneker (b. 1992, Colombia) is a Colombian-Dutch visual artist based in Antwerp. 'Walls, Soft as Listening' is her first solo exhibition in Belgium. In this exhibition, she approaches migration as both an aesthetic and a material process, in which memories and materials are carried across borders.

The exhibition stems from her research in the botanical gardens of Medellín (Colombia) into the spread of the rubber tree to Western Europe. It explores life in artificial, climate-controlled environments that both foster and restrict growth, reflecting through these carefully constructed spaces on our understanding of “home”. The tension between familiarity and estrangement is central to this exploration.

'Walls, Soft as Listening' intertwines personal archival imagery with speculative fiction through fragile forms and materials. The exhibition was developed in Benneker’s studio in MORPHO’s monastery building and produced by MORPHO in collaboration with RibRotterdam, with the support of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Belgium.

During the Borger Nocturne we gather in the Monastery Garden for an early evening of readings on belonging, by residents Davide La Montagna and E.N. Mirembe.

Davide La Montagna’s performative reading ‘Love is a Nightless City’ is a mermaid’s love letter from the wrong element — a body made of fluids and folklore, gasping on dry land and writing love as an act of vanishing.

E.N. Mirembe will be reading ‘How to Make a Country’, a meditation on blackqueer fugitivity as a mode of life lived beyond the terms of the nation state. Moving between theory and poetry, the reading takes wild flowers as a point of departure to ask what forms of relation become possible when belonging is no longer organized through ownership, citizenship, or legal recognition.

18:00-19:00

MORPHO is a non-profit organisation dedicated to artistic development. They give time, space and resources to artists, with the aim of fostering a dynamic and sustainable context for artistic work. As a studio provider, they rent out workspaces in a growing number of buildings in and around the city of Antwerp. As an artist residency, they annually host around 20 residents from Belgium and abroad whom we support in their projects and trajectories.