Magical Realism: Imagining Natural Dis order

Edited by Sofia Dati, Helena Kritis & Dirk Snauwaert

With Contributions by Karen River Barad, Chris Cyrille-Isaac, Vinciane Despret, Leticia Renaut, Zayaan Khan, Shayma Nader and Susan Schuppli

English and French Edition

Magical Realism explores the convergence of artistic expressions with scientific and cosmogonic narratives, blending myths, theories, and cosmologies that track the histories of the universe, its organisms, and its elements.

For centuries, Western philosophy has prioritised Reason over embodied knowledge, positioning Man as the dominant force over Nature, which was revered as sublime and exploited for capitalist growth. In an era where the limits of natural resources are undeniable, this worldview is now facing its limits. Magical Realism challenges the nature-culture divide, offering new collaborations between scientific observation and mythical storytelling. It examines how these realms can intertwine to reveal fresh insights, from the microscopic to the technological, while questioning extractivist and productivist ideologies.

As an extension of the threads running through the art exhibition, the book brings together existing and newly commissioned works of art and texts by leading contemporary thinkers who navigate the intersection of poetics, ecology, science, and the humanities.

Following The Absent Museum (2017) and Risquons-Tout (2020), Magical Realism is the third in a series of ambitious large-scale exhibitions in which WIELS engages with specific patterns within contemporary artistic practice, underscoring the necessity for transformation, on an aesthetic level as well as within wider economic, ecological, social, and political shifts.