Since 1 April 2026, the exhibition ‘Drifting Belgians‘ has been on view at the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp. In this exhibition, visual artist Mashid Mohadjerin explores the stories of Belgian migrants who, in the 1920s, disguised beneath white sheets, attempted to cross into the United States via Canada.
With this temporary exhibition, ‘Drifting Belgians’, the museum invites visitors to look in a new way at a little-known chapter of history: Belgian migrants of the 1920s who, despite strict restrictions on American immigration, still attempted the crossing via Canada.
The artistic project is rooted in a striking historical fragment: in 1923, an American border guard reported seeing ‘ghost walkers’—figures clad in white sheets moving across the ice. These figures have come to symbolise the determination of migrants facing extremely harsh conditions.
“In January 1923, during one of his patrols, American border guard John Coe spied on the frozen Detroit River through his binoculars, and he saw four people on the white ice coming his way who looked like ghosts. They were two Belgians and an Italian, accompanied by a Canadian smuggler. They had draped white sheets over themselves as camouflage and covered the soles of their shoes with iron to prevent slipping. It was a common practice. The local population spoke of ghost walkers, as a symbol of a growing illegal industry in the American-Canadian border area of the early 1920s.”
This story inspired Mohadjerin to create a personal and artistic interpretation of the journey. Throughout the exhibition, visitors experience the many facets of migration through photographs, audio, and video installations: the search for a better life at great personal risk; how people, then and now, risk everything in pursuit of a future; and how that dream can collide with reality. Historical postcards and letters, alongside contemporary messages, offer insight into the fragments of the story that reach the home front in families separated by migration.
Antwerp Alderman for Culture Lien Van de Kelder (Vooruit): “You and I—indeed all of us—have, for generations, been searching for a better life for ourselves, our children, and those who follow. In a city like Antwerp, this deeply contemporary theme resonates through the many migration stories that shape our city. Behind the ‘ghost walkers’ of this exhibition are not mythical figures, but people of flesh and blood, with courage, hope, and despair. With Drifting Belgians, Mashid Mohadjerin reminds us that we must never look away—from the past, not today, and not in the future.”
Drifting Belgians is not a historical reconstruction, but an artistic journey that makes the past and present—and the experiences of people on the move, palpable. Mohadjerin undertook the journey herself, and visitors follow a path through the exhibition. She translates this story into a visual language that subtly weaves together documentary elements and artistic imagination.
Visual artist Mashid Mohadjerin, born in 1976 in Tehran in Iran, obtained her doctorate in the arts in 2021 from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. She works internationally with photography, video, sound, collage, and text. Her work has been exhibited and awarded worldwide and consistently explores multi-perspective narratives.