FOMU 2025 | Chrystel Mukeba – Katja Mater – Lee Miller – Mashid Mohadjerin

On a Thursday in April 2025, I visited both FOMU, Antwerp‘s photography museum, and M HKA, the museum of contemporary art in Antwerp. They’re situated in the same neighbourhood, at the Zuidpark. And with my museumPASSmusée, it’s ‘free’. Or better: included.

FOMU changes its exhibitions yearly, if I’m not mistaking. This is the current offer.

Chrystel Mukeba: ‘I’ve Never Seen My Father Cry’, until 4 May 2025

In late 2024 Chrystel Mukeba, born in 1983, and her father André visited Kinshasa. A decisive trip for father and daughter: she had never been to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and he had not returned in 46 years.

‘I’ve Never Seen my Father Cry‘ is the photographer’s most personal project to date. Her father’s story, and by extension her own, reflect the complex nature of diasporic experiences: The pain caused by spatial separation from family and country, and the inbetweenness that it results in. The longing for answers surrounding questions about identity and familial history, and the aching silence they can be met with.

Homecoming is the first part in Mukeba’s ongoing project ‘I’ve Never Seen My Father Cry’. Its realisation was facilitated in part by the FOMU Grant. The grant covers a commission of new work, a presentation at the museum, and an acquisition for the museum’s collection. Mukeba was nominated by Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre, a partner of FOMU.

The FOMU Grant offers an environment for the development of the artistic practices of photographers in Flanders and encourages vibrancy and innovation in the field of photography. Thanks to the involvement of external partners in the nomination process of the grant, FOMU is able to expand its own perspective on the photographic landscape, as well as its exhibitions and acquisitions. The FOMU Patrons generously support the FOMU Grant.

‘I’ve Never Seen my Father Cry’, Chrystel Mukeba

‘No Longer Not Yet – Katja Mater and the FOMU collection’, until 22 February 2026

Upon FOMU’s invitation, visual artist Katja Mater, born in the Netherlands in 1979, explores the museum’s collection and creates a remarkable selection around the theme of time. Mater designs unusual frameworks for the collection items and creates spatial installations with them.

The exhibition ‘No Longer Not Yet‘ allows you to experience ‘time’ in a variety of ways: from solar time and the rhythm of the body to times of remembrance and asynchronous, cosmic, or even invisible time.

Mater frames the works, their (anonymous) makers, and the subjects depicted in the photographs with care and precision. Mater points to elements that are often overlooked or forgotten, such as a message written on the back of a photograph. Meanwhile Mater also creates new works inspired by objects from the museum’s collection, including one of the FOMU collection’s highlights: the restored Kaiserpanorama.

Specifically, for the Kaiserpanorama Mater creates 50 new stereo photographs that play with language, spatiality and perception. The Kaiserpanorama is a stereoscopic viewing cabinet from 1905 that introduced mass audiences to a photographic 3D spectacle. Up to 25 persons can take a seat on stools around the viewing cabinet to experience the magic of three-dimensional images.

The Kaiserpanorama is set in motion every first Sunday of the month.

Collection exhibition with works by: Many anonymous creators and Alphonse Giroux et Cie., Alphonse Van Besten, Amelia Bergner, Antoine Hoorens, August Sander, Cassils, Charles Jean Swolfs, Dominique Somers, Frans Van de Poel, Geert Goiris, George Filleul, Guillaume Weber-Chapuis, Harold Eugene Edgerton, Henry Draper, Jaques Messin, Joseph-Maurice Bourot, Katja Mater, Laure Winants, Lebohang Kganye, Marie-Françoise Plissart, Nick Geboers, Paul Sano, Rik Selleslags, Suzy Embo, Underwood & Underwood and Warren De la Rue.

About Katja Mater

Katja Mater is a visual artist, filmmaker, editor and teacher working between Amsterdam and Brussels.

Mater’s artistic practice is focused on the boundaries of optical media and combines various disciplines such as photography, film, drawing, performance and installation. Mater investigates aspects that are often beyond the limits of human eyesight, thus offering another view of the world by showing how photography and film, for example, capture things differently from the human eye. Mater plays on notions of time, space and perception.

Recent exhibitions include ‘Circulate – Photography Beyond Frames‘ at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2024) and ‘When Things Fall Apart‘, Manifold Books, Amsterdam (2024); in addition to a solo practice as visual artist, Katja Mater is involved in various collaborative projects, Mater is editor of Girls Like Us Magazine since 2014, and one of the founders of Mothers & Daughters, a lesbian* and trans* bar.

‘No Longer Not Yet – Katja Mater and the FOMU collection’.

‘Lee Miller in Print’, until 8 June 2025

Model, war correspondent, photographer, surrealist: Lee Miller (1907-1977) wore many hats. As one of the few widely known female photographers of the first half of the 20th century she has made a valuable contribution to photography.

In the 1930s, Lee Miller is part of the surrealist circles of Paris. At her studio she creates commercial photos for fashion magazines, sometimes also working in front of the camera. As a former model she understands posing like no one else.

During and after World War II, she documents important moments as a photographer and war correspondent. This is quite a remarkable feat for a woman: such work was typically the exclusive domain of male photographers.

Lee Miller’s diverse, layered, and often personal corpus of work appears in well-known magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and LIFE Magazine, as well as in avant-gardist artists’ magazines. Her photographs also appear in publications by the allied forces, such as The War Illustrated and Cadran. Her own publication Wrens in Camera is focused on the wartime labour carried out by women for the British Royal Navy.

‘Lee Miller in Print‘ offers a new perspective on Miller’s work and life through her photographs and articles that were published in magazines and other print media. The exhibition also highlights 20th-century developments in the photographic medium, and the use of photographic imagery as propaganda.

The ‘Lee Miller in Print’ exhibition was originally developed by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. A generous loan from the Lee Miller Archives, which manage the artist’s estate, enabled its realisation at FOMU. The exhibition resulted from years of research by curator Saskia van Kampen-Prein at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

A same-titled publication in Dutch and English accompanies the exhibition. For sale at the FOMU shop and online (€ 34,95).

Curators: Saskia van Kampen-Prein and Anne Ruygt.

Mashid Mohadjerin: ‘Spiraling Outward’, until 8 June 2025

In the exhibition ’Spiraling Outward‘, Iranian-Belgian artist Mashid Mohadjerin (born in 1976 in Tehran) invites you to experience her universe where she weaves photography, video installations, collages and text into a personal and delicate fabric that blurs the conventional boundaries between art and documentary, time and space, the factual and the emotive.  

Family chronicles merge with momentous political events and are set against the background of a broader history of the MENA region.

Mohadjerin uncovers invisible nuances hidden beneath the extraordinary and the familiar. The exhibition Spiraling Outward offers an alternative, multifaceted view on pressing issues such as migration, cultural transformation and resistance.

This is the first time her new series, based on her book ‘Riding in Silence & The Crying Dervish‘ (2025) is on view. The selection connects an account of forced migration to a wider research on how notions of masculinity relate to political ideology in a rapidly changing world.

‘Riding in Silence’ is a continuation of her acclaimed series ‘Freedom is Not Free‘ (2021), in which she explores the role of women in the context of resistance in the MENA region. Through photography, collages, personal archives and family stories she highlights several generations of women who fight for their freedom.  

Mohadjerin’s video installations ‘Rapture‘ (2020/2023) en ‘My Body, Every Body‘ (2022/2023), explores the role of traditions and rituals in the context of resistance.  A soundscape by Radwan Mouhned ties together the two installations.

‘Thumbs Up‘ (2019) is a compilation of Instagram footage by Maedeh Hojabri, who was arrested in 2018 for dancing and showing her body in ‘public’ and thereby defying the continuing restrictions on women in Iran. The work sheds light on the ongoing resistance of a new generation.

The recent installation ‘Border Crossing‘ (2024), a collaboration with composer Jan De Vroede, reflects on spatial boundaries and migration through image and sound.

About Mashid Mohadjerin

Multidisciplinary artist Mashid Mohadjerin obtained her Doctorate in the Arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2021.  

Her work is shown internationally and has received multiple awards, including the Les Rencontres d’Arles Author’s Book Award for ’Freedom is Not Free’ (2021) and first prize in the Contemporary Issues category of World Press Photo 2009. She has published three books and during this exhibition will present her most recent artist’s book, ’Riding in Silence & The Crying Dervish’ (2025).  

In recent years Mohadjerin’s research-based work has expanded towards multi-media installations containing video work, sound, text, collages and performance. Through these media she continues to explore multi-perspectivity and alternative forms of narration.

Mohadjerin’s newest artist’s book, ’Riding in Silence & The Crying Dervish’ (2025), is for sale at the FOMU shop.