In art and literature, magical encounters between two conflicting worlds have always been fertile ground for exploring paradigm-shifting changes in the real world. Magical realism first entered mainstream consciousness through the novels of Latin American authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose characters contend with prophecies and invisible forces, commune with spirits and even float away from their lives. Before being popularised in literature, however, Magical Realism was coined and defined by German photographer and art critic Franz Roh in 1925 to describe a genre of visual art. WIELS in Brussels mobilises the genre to explore the growing dissonance between humanity and nature and the consequent environmental crisis in the exhibition, Magical Realism: Imagining Natural Dis/order. Co-curated by Sofia Dati, Helena Kritis and Dirk Snauwaert, the group show features over 30 artists from across the globe and spans painting, large-scale installation, video art, multimedia art, simulations and more.

Magical Realism is the third in a series of exhibitions and publications focused on pressing global issues, preceded by The Absent Museum (2017) and Risquons-tout (2020). In the exhibition, the juxtaposition of magic and the everyday becomes a vehicle to examine the sociopolitical and ecological state of the world under extractive capitalism. Speaking about this unique format, Snauwert told STIR, “We developed a new exhibition format with both planetary and prospective scope, combined with a thematic, essayistic approach…[which] allows the curatorial team to gather artists and intellectuals whose work engages departing from a specific concept, using it as a prism for new production.” The artists in this exhibition employ fantasy, mythology and the supernatural to move beyond the boundaries of hard science and create a diverse, imaginative space to imagine new modes of relating to the environment.

This dialogue between fields is exemplified by Spanish artist Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s installation La Pensée Férale (Feral Thought, 2022). The artwork, grounded in Brazilian ecology and cosmologies, seeks to trouble the binary between the domestic and the wild. Photographs of vegetation in the Tijuca National Park in Rio de Janeiro reveal the eyes of dogs hidden within and are presented alongside texts by Brazilian philosopher Juliana Fausto. Placing ‘man’s best friend’ in this unfamiliar context, unimpeded by human presence, Mangrané calls into question modern relationships with animals and the ‘wild’. Similarly, the Brussels-based artist duo, mountaincutters, defamiliarise the prototypical image of nature—trees—with an adaptation of their site-specific installation, Fertile Falls (2024), first exhibited at the Ter Dilft Cultural Centre in Belgium. They explore the horizontal dimension of trees, juxtaposing cuttings with metal fixtures and glass scattered on a dirt floor, thinking of them as ‘sleeping’ rather than dead, decentring human perception.

The whole exhibition is based on the idea of an encounter between seemingly opposing ways of conceiving the world…so it was important for us to make space for both contrast and complementarity among multiple perspectives in order to move beyond the limitations of the unilateral, binary approach –Sofia Dati

Acclaimed American artist Joan Jonas juxtaposes text with videos of marine life in Moving Off the Land II (2019). A culmination of three years of research, the video work features footage from aquariums and Jamaican waters, which suffer from overfishing and algal bloom. Narration and subtitles over the clips feature excerpts from poetry by Melville and Dickinson and the writings of naturalists like Rachel Carson and Sy Montgomery, reminding viewers of the rich biodiversity and cultural importance of the ocean and its creatures and the existential threats they now face. Echoing this research-based approach, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University, presents Sketch Diagram of Stress-Strain Dynamics of Heavy Metal Extraction from Human Compression Fields (2024). As inscrutable as its title, the scientific, heavily annotated diagram highlights the lack of mainstream understanding of the immense breadth and depth of the impact of human activity on ecosystems.

French artist Gaëlle Choisne takes a different approach, drawing from the intensely familiar and even banal by centring a common household appliance—the fridge—in her audiovisual installation, Ego, he goes (Fridge selfspeech and shine love consciousness - Period!) (2021). Pushing against the boundaries of what an art object can be, she uses material storytelling to critique consumer waste in a capitalist society. Uzbek visual artist and filmmaker Saodat Ismailova also draws her inspiration from real life, using a more fantastical setting—the ancient walnut forests of Kyrgyzstan. Her film Arslanbob (2023) uncovers the story of a forest steeped in mythology, famed for its hallucinatory effects (attributed to the carbon dioxide released by the walnuts at dusk). For Ismailova, magical realism can already be found in the natural world for those dedicated enough to look. The narration, cinematic visuals and soundscapes draw viewers into a place where the veil between humanity, nature and magic thins, making their interplay evident.

Discussing the possibilities and challenges presented by assembling these distinctive works and practices, Dati said, “We chose to invite a heterogeneous array of voices and practices in dialogue. The whole exhibition is based on the idea of an encounter between seemingly opposing ways of conceiving the world…so it was important for us to make space for both contrast and complementarity among multiple perspectives in order to move beyond the limitations of the unilateral, binary approach.”

Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña’s 1973 oil painting, Angel de la Menstruación, personifies magical force as a bleeding angel riding the back of a yellow snake. Vicuña imagines her as a companion guiding women through transitional periods, celebrating demonised bodily processes and their role in the natural cycle of life. In a similarly magical tableau, Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga presents plants and dirt confined in small glass orbs, attached by rope and metal, alongside roots and other plant matter. Alignment (2022) looks like a ritual interrupted, laying bare the constructed dichotomy between organic and inorganic material and how the hierarchy in which they are placed serves to disrupt the complex social, political and ecological alignment of bodies and the Earth.

In his multimedia installation, The End of Imagination (2022), Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas shifts the exhibition’s focus to a darker, imagined future. In extreme darkness, the ominous silhouette of a jagged machine arises from the gallery floor and in a live simulation, from the setting of a postwar oil rig. The artificial gaze of moving lights locates, observes and follows viewers seemingly of their own accord, creating a dystopian image of machinery’s control and constant surveillance of life. The artwork warns of a dire, swiftly approaching reality. Political works like Rojas’, which spark conversation about issues dominating discussions at the European Parliament, are at the centre of WIELS’ curatorial strategy. “The aesthetic propositions of the artists have the ambition to influence the mentalities departing from a sensitive consciousness, overcoming the rigidness of administrative-legal or the rhetoric-manipulative languages of European diplomacy and administration,” said Snauwert.

The exhibition is an example of the possibilities created by centring polyphony. Magical Realism is as multivalent as its artists and the literary and artistic genre it draws on. By interrupting fixed narratives about reality and nature, the exhibition invites viewers to picture a future outside the bounds of the Anthropocene as it exists: a future where magic and reality and humanity and nature are not so rigidly separated.

‘Magical Realism: Imagining Natural Dis/order’ will be on view at WIELS from May 29 – September 28, 2025.