Article: Wouter Hillaert on Art & Zwalm (De Standaard)

What corn and bread in Zwalm tell us about the world

From cinema in the cornfields to a chapel dedicated to Mary filled with needles of pain: far from the city, the 'Kunst & Zwalm' biennial delves into the essence of things. "The countryside is the stage for important contemporary issues."

02-09-2025, De Standaard, Wouter Hillaert

On an empty gravel car park near the IJzerkotmolen, Ismail Matar quickly sprays a touch of orange paint on his sculpture Ashes of us: a knot of calligraphic curls rising from a pile of construction waste collected in the neighbourhood. As the first visitors to Kunst & Zwalm arrive, map in hand, the Palestinian artist fiddles with his last bits of wire, battling the wind. "This work is my phoenix for the people of Gaza," he explains. "The curls are the first Arabic letters of some of the names of deceased Palestinians, who are now reaching for the sky. They will never destroy us."

His work evokes a tension that runs through the entire art route, six kilometres long through the hilly countryside around Sint-Maria-Latem and Paulatem: the confrontation between global themes such as war and global warming and the quiet peace of this rustic landscape between church towers, cornfields, riding schools and sheep pastures. In a small chapel, Greek artists Anna Housiada and Elli Vassalou of The Post Collective explain to an elderly couple from the neighbourhood what their homemade bread made from local grain tells us about colonialism and Catholic imperialism. Confusion of tongues lurks around the corner.

Art without bubbles

Yet it is precisely this tension that is the starting point for guest curators Ewoud Vermote, Leontien Allemeersch and Vincent Focquet of Kunstenplatform Plan B, the collective that has been working with contemporary art in rural areas for ten years this summer. "The countryside, as a place in transformation, is the scene of important contemporary issues," states their visitor's guide. With the theme of 'land' as their guiding principle, they have invited international artists to Zwalm to build bridges to community rituals and ecological struggles elsewhere in the world, as inspiration or as a warning.

In a bare barn, video artist Pinar Ögrenci lets Turkish women testify about their resistance to the construction of thermal installations on their precious land. In a wood workshop, among neatly sawn planks, a mesmerising video installation by Belgian-Congolese artist Léonard Pongo brings rivers and forests to life as one big silent chorus. Back2soilbasics, a collective of mainly Brussels residents of colour with an interest in permaculture (a form of ecological agriculture), planted colourful sayings among the crops in a beet field: 'The beauty of our lands is in our own hands. It is a thought that runs like a green thread through the art route: without care for the soil, there can be no care for the people.

Plan B did not hesitate for long when it was approached for this edition by Boem vzw, a club of local volunteers and art lovers who have been organising Kunst & Zwalm every two years since 1997. "Our interest in the rural hinterland has many sides," says Focquet. "It is not only the rapid political shift to the right in the countryside that concerns us. There are also many people living here who have nothing to do with art, because it mainly takes place in the city. Their story is rarely told. I fear that in the arts we are missing out on part of the imagination of alternative futures." Through an interaction between urban artists and the region, Plan B wants to burst the bubbles on both sides.

Piercing the postcard

Several works have been created with input from the local community. For example, the duo Agripuncture mapped out the pain points of local residents, which are bitter memories of specific places. In a Marian chapel, accompanied by the mournful singing of self-written gospel songs about all those small or large traumas, visitors can use a needle to add their own pain points to the map of Zwalm. A whole geography is growing with words such as 'boarding school', 'White Brigade', 'exhibitionism', 'fly-tipping' and a suicide in Nederzwalm Castle.

Plan B deliberately chose not to be guided solely by the high postcard value of this picturesque region, but also wanted to dig deeper into its less visible side. "Where some rural art routes use the view purely as a backdrop, we sought a more substantive anchoring," says Vermote. "Monumental art by well-known artists was not our approach. The best compliment we received was from all the volunteers who help supervise the locations: they thought our exhibition was 'very Zwalm'."

Local artists are also contributing. In the case of the artisan Atelier V.V., you can take that literally: together with two graphic designers, it provided a section of church wall with a new artistic brick pattern, printed with homemade paint made from stone rubble. The activist group Friends of the Zwalm Villages also created a remarkable work: an immense guillotine above a map of Zwalm, to warn against the sale of public land for quick profit.

Alarm bell

A little further on, Klokkenluider (Whistleblower) provides a fitting soundtrack. Bert Villa placed his seven-metre-high alarm bell, designed in Zeeland as an echo of the 1953 flood disaster, in the middle of a vast ploughed field. A group of visitors pull the rope with gusto. Their clanging alarm for the disasters that await us sounds over the sleepy village.

Meanwhile, the most beautiful work remains the landscape itself. Artist duo Een-twee cleverly responds to this with its Cinema Belvedere. Through a narrow passage between the corn, equipped with a bowl of local popcorn, you suddenly rise above the foliage via a small staircase. On quiet benches, a steel frame prevents you from seeing the promised landscape film, but instead you see the hills themselves, as far as the eye can see. A Dutch couple, visiting the region by chance, exclaim: "So this is what cinema looks like in Belgium! You don't even have to replace the film reels here."

"Even after ten years, I'm still amazed at how much is possible when you venture into the countryside," concludes Allemeersch of Plan B. "Why do so few cultural centres take on this extra-urban challenge? Open your eyes! It may require more work and energy, but you also get a lot in return."