The FOMU photography museum in Antwerp has opened a new exhibition titled 'Families', curated by Anne Ruygt. The show explores the evolving concept of family through historical and contemporary photography, featuring works by artists such as Mous Lamrabat, Cecil Beaton, Omar Victor Diop, Mayara Ferrão, Peter Hujar, Carmen Winant, and Seiichi Furuya. It includes diverse perspectives, from 'hidden mother portraits' and post-mortem photography to AI-generated images of queer Black and Indigenous women, questioning traditional notions of kinship and representation.
The exhibition matters because it addresses urgent societal debates around motherhood, gender equality, and the nuclear family as a historical construct. By drawing primarily from FOMU's extensive collection of four million objects, the show demonstrates how museums can use their archives to engage with contemporary issues. It also highlights photography's unique role in both documenting and challenging how we record personal history, making visible the invisible labor and diverse family structures that have long existed outside mainstream narratives.