Bianca Baldi - Sea Through Skin
13 September 2025 - 26 January 2026, Kunsthal Extra City
Bianca Baldi will guide a tour of her solo exhibition Sea Through Skin at Kunsthal Extra City on 23 October 2025. We warmly invite you to join. Register for the tour via bianca.baldi@kdg.be
Curated by Joachim Naudts & Darly Benneker
In Sea Through Skin, artist Bianca Baldi (SA, 1985) looks at the complex phenomenon of white passing. Being perceived, or made to be perceived, as part of another racial group was dubbed playing white in South African vernacular. The ability to play white relies on one’s proximity to whiteness and was deeply shaped by colonial hierarchies of visibility. Through her image-making practice, Baldi reflects on how identity, perception and power construct how we see – and are seen.
The sea runs through the exhibition as a quiet undercurrent. It evokes fluidity, depth and resistance: a force that refuses to be bordered or contained. For Baldi, the ocean is both metaphor and memory: tied to her mother’s fear of water, rooted in childhood trauma and the racially segregated beaches of Apartheid South Africa. Under that regime, even the coastline was divided by race.
At the heart of the exhibition is the cuttlefish: a cephalopod that changes colour, texture and shape to adapt to its surroundings. It becomes a symbol of camouflage and fluid identity. For Baldi, the cuttlefish offers a lens through which to think about passing – not only as a strategy of survival, but as a challenge to the visual codes we use to read identity. The project began with a personal discovery in her own family history, an encounter with the complexities and consequences of racial classification under Apartheid that sparked years of artistic inquiry.
Drawing from popular culture, literature and historical contexts, Baldi’s work invites us to reflect on how we perceive, label and define one another. In Sea Through Skin, she brings together film, textiles, glass, photography, drawing and installation to look at identity as something not fixed but shifting, shaped by history, context and appearance.
This solo exhibition marks the culmination of Bianca Baldi’s PhD in the arts at Sint Lucas Antwerpen (KdG) and ARIA (University of Antwerp), titled Play-White: Racial Passing and Embodied Images.
Location: Kunsthal Extra City - Chapel, Provinciestraat 112, 2018 Antwerpen
Danial Shah - Visions of Becoming and Belonging
24 October 2025 - 4 January 2026, FOMU
Danial Shah presents Visions of Becoming and Belonging, an exhibition rooted in his ongoing PhD research in the arts at Sint Lucas Antwerpen and the University of Antwerp (coordinated by ARIA | Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts).
Through photography and film, Shah explores the world of photo studios in his hometown Quetta (Pakistan). Spaces originally characterized by hand painted backdrops, costumes and material props, these studios have today morphed into digital collage playgrounds. Nevertheless they still serve the original function as spaces for constructing and reworking identities, aspirations, and belongings.
Shah’s work highlights how people use these studios to project themselves into imagined realities and to construct themselves amidst changing personal dreams and social dramas.
The exhibition Danial Shah – Visions of Becoming and Belonging takes place on the first floor and can be visited free of charge.
About the artist:
Danial Shah (Quetta, Pakistan, 1989) works with the medium of photography and film and is currently pursuing an artistic PhD at Sint Lucas Antwerp and University of Antwerp. His debut feature film Make it Look Real (2024) premiered at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2024 and is currently being shown at various film festivals.
More info at FOMU