Marking the fifteenth anniversary of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, the traveling exhibition ‘we refuse_d’ has opened at M HKA in Antwerp. Curated by Nadia Radwan and Vasif Kortun, the project draws on the intellectual lineage of Hannah Arendt’s reflections on displacement and the historical precedent of the Salon des Refusés. The exhibition features a constellation of works by artists including Khalil Rabah, Barış Doğrusöz, and Nour Shantout, exploring refusal not as a simple negation, but as a complex strategy for survival, dignity, and the preservation of memory.
This exhibition is significant for its attempt to decenter Western institutional narratives by bringing Arab modern and contemporary perspectives into a European context. By framing refusal as a "rehearsal" and a shifting proposition, the curators challenge the museum's role as a static archive. The show tests whether radical gestures of institutional critique and political agency can maintain their critical edge when displaced from their originating context in Doha to a major European museum, highlighting the ongoing negotiation of visibility and legitimacy for artists from the Arab world.