For some time I've been standing, Kunsthal Ghent (2025)

“For some time I’ve been standing, in front of a white stucco wall, on a white road that is raised above all the surroundings and the dirt underneath, as though it’s a platform. All around me are masses of luggage, suitcases and bags.” – Kathy Acker, My Mother: Demonology

By entering into dialogue with the fresco on the back wall of the Old House, the artworks reiterate its significance as a palimpsest — responding to, echoing and reimagining it. Immediately drawing the gaze, the fresco tends to direct a body’s movement in the space. Between the other white walls, it attracts the eye, inviting it to wander over its worn, bodily surface, to follow the contours of the gaps and cracks, to glide over the smooth areas and to acknowledge its most vulnerable parts.

Evolving through repeated patterns of becoming and erasure, the fresco has been an accomplice to the passage of time. Originally built in 1287 as a refuge for monks, the Old House was reconstructed in the fifteenth century, when the fresco came into being. The original fresco depicting a crucifixion scene was destroyed during the first iconoclasm in 1566, with faces of figures forcibly scratched out. Later, elements of theatre-like architectural decor were added to the surface. Around the fresco, the usage of the monastery site shifted over the hundreds of years that followed, from artist studios, museums, residential spaces and galleries.

The stratified history of the Old House and its fresco resonates with the fragmented structure, temporal disjunctions, and personal mythologies found in Kathy Acker’s 1993 novel My Mother: Demonology. Integral to Acker’s writing is the process of rewriting and reinterpreting, often plagiarising other sources as her own. In this work, she navigates how dreams can overwrite the legacy of the past and grapple with the present, a speculative journey through overlapping temporalities. The image might appear as desolate and paralysed, as an acknowledgement of a stasis, of the accumulation of the past symbolised through the narrator’s possessions.

Curators: Bethan Burnside, Daphné Charitos, Gustav Dendooven, Hanna Julia Erdosi, Natalija Gucheva, Abel Hartooni, Yasemin Köker, Temitayo Olalekan, Flora Vanclooster, Nina Turina, Jean Watt, Leane Lloret, Tuta Chkheidze, Maartje Claes, Emilia Naomi Keller, Arthur Saint Remy, Miranda Pastor and Marie Stalpaert.

Artists: Chupan Atashi, Manon de Boer, Michael Kleine, Brigitte Louter, Emma Ydiers and Astrid Specht Seebeerg.