A truly immense journey

A truly immense journey invites you on a voyage without a fixed destination – an exploration of the forces that propel people, ideas and artistic practices across geographies and histories, from the early 1900s to the present. More than 350 major works, predominantly from the Centre Pompidou and Kanal, but also from other Belgian public and private collections are gathered within the exhibition. Visitors are invited to drift between places and movements, encountering modern art icons such as Lygia Clark, Sonia Delaunay, Natalia Goncharova, Henri Matisse, Wifredo Lam, Katarzyna Kobro, Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti, alongside contemporary international and Brussels-based artists including Sammy Baloji, Edith Dekyndt, Aglaia Konrad and Hana Miletić. The juxtaposition of historical and contemporary works creates unexpected constellations that shed new light on pertinent debates in relation to the city of Brussels and art histories.

Inspired by the museum’s location along the Charleroi-Brussels canal – a historical conduit of trade, exchange and migration – A truly immense journey unfolds in three movements. The first examines stories of circulation, tracing how people around the world, including in Belgium, are displaced for political, social or environmental reasons. Another floor situates early 20th-century European Modernism within its colonial entanglements with Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean, and highlights the role of travelling and migrating artists in disseminating new artistic languages. The final section places the visitor in motion, showing how artists across geographies and generations – from Constructivism, De Stijl and Bauhaus to Minimalism and Kinetic art – moved beyond traditional static forms to embrace chance and participation.

 

The title echoes writer Franz Kafka’s My Destination (1935), which evokes a world defined by restlessness and continual transformation, a vision strikingly resonant in a moment of global instability.

 

A truly immense journey inaugurates a series of long-term exhibitions in collaboration and co-curation with the Centre Pompidou in Paris.