While COVID-19 continues to constrain ourselves to our homes and with the Antwerp Art Weekend cancelled, art organizations and artists are finding ways to bring art to you instead. Therefore, we're highlighting some of the exhibitions and activities that would have taken place during the Antwerp Art Weekend which you can experience right now from the comfort of your couch or in the streets of Antwerp. Follow antwerpart.be for all upcoming/running exhibitions and events.

In an attempt to answer the question "how do artists experience and look upon the Corona pandemic crisis?", 200 visual artists, including students and professors from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and Sint Lucas Antwerpen are reacting by activating the unused billboards in our empty streets. So instead of taking a walk in the park, why don't you plan a route and visit these free artworks on display. The project will run until May 31 and you can discover all locations on this interactive map.

“Tous Ensemble” was the slogan used by the Belgian Red Devils during the World Cup of 2018 and serves as the title of Edition Populaire's group exhibition, which adopts football as its theme.

Edition Populaire is a two-part vitrine gallery to be viewed from the streets, run by artist Philip Aguirre y Otegui and his wife Liesje Vandenbroeck, and it celebrated its 10 year anniversary on May 9, 2020. It's located in a lively neighborhood in Borgerhout, where football is a much practiced and talked about sport, partly because of a small football court where kids play in the same street, so they have been playing with the idea to do a show about this theme for a while now.

The ten year existence and the European Championship, which had been planned for the summer, seemed like the perfect timing to finally organize "Tous Ensemble". But the EC got cancelled due to the corona crisis and Edition Populaire had to revise there plans of organizing a grand happening that included the neighbors and people of the area, because of these strange times and current social restrictions.

Ever since the lock down, they have been getting more reactions to their vitrine gallery. It's clear that passersby are getting their comfort or even confusion from what is shown. Edition Populaire is convinced that, now more than ever, art has an important public function to fulfill and that's why they have decided to nonetheless bring a smaller version of the original plan for "Tous Ensemble".

Tous Ensemble shows the work of Otobong Nkanga (NI), Bert Huyghe (BE), Damien De Lepeleire (BE), Bram Van Meervelde (BE) , Philip Aguirre y Otegui (BE), Sam Nhlengethwa (ZA) en Ralf Kokke (NL)." and will run from May 15 til July 12, 2020. The address is Bloemstraat 20 and Bleekhofstraat 22, Antwerpen.

Currently on view at the M HKA is the work of Californian artist Tramaine de Senna. If it were not for Corona perhaps. Those of us who already visited her explosively titled exhibition MASTERBLASTER, might have caught (mind the pun) her very contagious spirit, which de Senna cleverly packs in bold colored, multi-layered exuberance. It’s exactly those layers M HKA would like to unravel for you in an interview with the ever so charming artist herself.

See the interview below and click here for more MASTERBLASTER.

Gallery FIFTY ONE was due to present the remarkable portrait series ‘Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich: Homage to the Masters’, by the American photographer Sandro Miller (°1985) with the actor John Malkovich in the leading role. For this project, Miller went back to the iconic images that have always inspired and moved him in his career as a photographer and recreated these memorable classics with his close friend and muse John Malkovich as his model. Under Miller’s close direction, Malkovich masterly transformed himself into a diverse set of characters, ranging from John Lennon to Marilyn Monroe and Picasso to Dorothea Lange’s iconic ‘migrant mother’.

Instead, Gallery FIFTY ONE has released a making of video, which you can view below.

And IBASHO Gallery as well is now showing a behind the scenes short of Belgian photographer Wanda Tuerlinckx making a portrait of robot F2. The exhibition, called Androids: a portrait series of robots in Japan, was supposed to open together with the Antwerp Art Weekend, May 14th, but has been postponed to Antwerp Art Weekend 2021 due to COVID-19.

See the short clip below.

For a full list of digital exhibitions, public interventions and galleries that are opening their doors again soon, or only halfway, check out our newsletter, socials, and hit those subscribe and like buttons to stay up to date on what's happening with art in Antwerp.