Stichting Historisch Charlois
Raymond W. Barion, Darly Benneker, Philipp Schwalb
26. – 29.03.2026
Exhibition view with works by Philipp Schwalb, March 2026. Photo: Frans Parthesius
Visitors visiting the exhibition at Stichting Historisch Charlois. Photo: Frans Parthesius
Left: Exhibition view. Middle: Raymond W. Barion, Drop and Run, 2025. Right: Exhibition view. Photos: Frans Parthesius
Darly Benneker, When I Dream of Home, 2024–present. Photo: Frans Parthesius
Stichting Historisch Charlois. Photo: Frans Parthesius
At Stichting Historisch Charlois, a local archive dedicated to the history of the neighbourhood, Het Zuid Manifest presented works by Raymond W. Barion, Darly Benneker and Philipp Schwalb.
Raymond W. Barion's Drop and Run (2025) is the brass replica of a radioactive source. The original Cobalt 60 Column was developed at the Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario in the early 1950s. It was developed to help study irradiation effects in biology and industrial contexts. The "Drop and Run" words engraved in it are supposed to work as a warning, and yet by the time you pick up and start to read "Drop", the radiation caused by Co60 would already have claimed your arm. By the time you finish reading: "and Run", the dose of radiation would be lethal.
When I Dream of Home (2024-present) by Darly Benekker combines video footage shot by the artist's adoptive father during the adoption journey from Medellín, Colombia, to the Netherlands in the mid-1990s. The work unfolds as a layered dialogue between the artist's voice, the father’s voice, and that of a fictional rubber tree, allowing these perspectives to merge and overlap. The footage moves between the personal and the impersonal through shifting images of in-between places and everyday figures, reflecting the complexity of belonging and displacement. Through this interplay of images and voices, the video questions who holds the power to shape a story, who is allowed to tell it, and how lived experience and imagination become intertwined.
The Cobalt-Butler-Family-Paintings (2025) by Philipp Schwalb are a series of thirteen book-sized, double-sided, Delft-blue paintings. Through color and constellation, each painting simultaneously interweaves four different narrations, using its own very precise language, internal logic and painterly language to create one Bild. Schwalb juxtaposes a storyline about cobalt with a book by Octavia Butler, a moment from the artist's family history, and the philosophy of painting. The cobalt storyline, for instance, traces the history of cobalt as a pigment in Delftware, addressing its socio-economic implications, its status as a raw material, the mining of cobalt, its role in art history, its use in lithium batteries for electronic devices as well as its functions in the human body.
Artworks:
Raymond W. Barion, Drop and Run, 2025
Darly Benneker, When I Dream of Home, 2024–present
Philipp Schwalb, Cobalt-Butler-Family-Paintings, 2025
Raymond W. Barion's work was presented in collaboration with Etablissement d'en face.
Darly Benneker's work was presented in collaboration with MORPHO.
Philipp Schwalb's work was presented in collaboration with JUBG.
Raymond Wladyslaw Barion (1995) is a visual artist and curator whose work centers on engagement with the histories of technology and contemporary structures of production. Born and raised between Antwerp, Belgium, and Gdańsk, Poland, Barion studied visual arts and museology before developing a curatorial and sculptural practice around the dimensions of fabrication and material culture. He lives and works in Milan, Italy.
Darly Benneker (1992, Colombia) is a Dutch-Colombian visual artist and curator based in Antwerp. Her practice is grounded in site-specific research and spans installation, sculpture, writing, and video. She studied at the Piet Zwart Institute (2017–2019) and at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin (2023–2024). She reimagines physical and emotional spaces as extensions of a fictional past, reshaping personal narratives through material and spatial interventions. Central to her work is an exploration of home, belonging, identity, and migration, understood not only as a socio-political condition but also as an aesthetic and material process that carries memory across borders, blurring reality and speculative fiction.
Philipp Schwalb (1984) is an artist who lives and works in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Since 2010, Philipp Schwalb has been experimenting with and questioning the activation of colour, form and figuration in painting, as well as their communication, conditions, impact and frameworks. Using Inbetween Instruments such as painting als Adjektivale Inrichting, Mnemeosyne.picture.Atlas, BilderCommons and Image-Constellation-Panels , he translates personal stories, cultural histories, and socio-economic questions into pictures and images. His recent paintings are coins: two-sided (direct/complex) and activated by (ex)change. Since 2011, he has been working on a research project focusing on Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne.Atlas(M.A.). He has organised M.A. study groups in Hamburg, Zurich, Geneva and Berlin, curated exhibitions, organised events, and published a comprehensive commentary on the M.A. In 2020, he initiated Mnemosyne.Atlas.Lab, a gathering format and international forum for discussing the M.A., image-constellations and their critique and use.
Etablissement d’en face is an art space in central Brussels. It aims to present artistic practices to an international audience by offering conditions of professional production to a wide spectrum of contemporary artists. Founded in 1991 by the artists Alec De Busschère, Delphine Bedel, Christophe Draeger and Patrick Everaert, it was originally located in the Rue d’Artois and moved to the Rue Antoine Dansaert in 2002. Over the years it has been programmed by various individuals. Currently, Ryan Cullen, Emeline Depas, Olivier Foulon, Jean-Paul Jacquet, Nina Janssen, Henrik Olai Kaarstein, Stefanie Snoek, and Harald Thys operate Etablissement d’en face.
MORPHO is a non-profit organisation that grants time, space and support to artists. They have a dual function as an artist residency and a studio provider, with the aim of fostering a dynamic and durable context for artistic work. They provide studios to 250 artists in the city and receive around 20 (inter)national residents each year with whom we build lasting trajectories. They want to give visibility to this community by applying for grants to organize events and presentations in our project space that are developed properly and remunerated fairly. They are located behind the Antwerp Zoo and Central Station, and share this former monastery site, including the garden, with Kunsthal Extra City.
JUBG is a Cologne based gallery for contemporary art, founded in 2020 by Jens-Uwe Beyer, Albert Oehlen and Alexander Warhus. It is a space for conversation and inspiration that connects art and music, sound. JUBG works with artists, musicians, writers, whether from the underground or acclaimed positions. The gallery program shows international artists and influential musicians combined in unique collaborations.