In An Invisible City, Thomas Verstraeten explores the city as a stage, a choreography of everyday moments filled with stories. The title references Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, in which explorer Marco Polo describes cities to the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan that serve as metaphors for human desires and memories. While Calvino seems to depict different cities each time, it becomes clear: they are all reflections of the same city.

At the heart of the exhibition is Symphony for Hundred Citizens and a Traffic Light, a large-scale urban project in which one hundred city residents each play their own urban ‘instrument’.

Together with composer Heleen Van Haegenborgh, Verstraeten creates an urban symphony of everyday sounds – from engines and rolling suitcases to dogs, drills, and traffic lights – which together form a sculptural collage of the city. The exhibition is complemented by key works from Verstraeten’s rich oeuvre, such as Familiestraat and Seefhoekseries.

With An Invisible City, Verstraeten invites us to look at the city in a new way. He makes the everyday extraordinary, visible, and tangible, showing how memories and dreams are intertwined with the reality of bricks, traffic lights, and footsteps.

Artists: Thomas Verstraeten