Lies Daenen

In 2024, the artists’ collective Art & Décolonisation emerged from seemingly coincidental yet meaningful encounters. Charles Djeumou, Moïse Ilunga Shambuyi, Freddy Tsimba, Sylvia Wesemael, and I decided to enter into dialogue and collaborate.

We see decolonization as an ongoing process of awareness and transformation, and we wish to explore how art can contribute to inner and collective change.
As a collective of artists with African and European roots, we aim to create contexts in which every voice can be heard, where other stories can be told and emotions shared. In this way, we seek to activate art as an invitation to awareness and healing.

For a long time, I lived with the idea that colonialism — here in Belgium — was mainly a story of the past. A story that did not really concern me as a white woman. That is how it was presented to us (or rather, barely spoken about). I now know that colonialism is still embedded in our culture, our mindset, and even our emotions. True decolonization requires attention and effort from both sides: the descendants of the colonized and those of the colonizer. I notice this again and again in the blind spots I continue to uncover as I consciously engage in dialogue and collaboration with people who have lived — and continue to live — the other side of the story.

In my artistic research into envisioning a world grounded in equality and reciprocity, and in my own development as a human being, decolonization has become an essential theme today.

The projects presented on this website are sometimes collective, sometimes personal, but always created in attunement with the collective.