Paul Hendrikse
ROBERTO BOLAÑO’S ANTWERP. AN EXHIBITION INSPIRED BY A NOVEL, A CITY AND A SCENE
In «Antwerp», detectives, victims, artists, alter-egos and vagabonds inhabit an enigmatic story. Bolaño thematises contemporary reality expressed through topics such as crime and corruption, sexual violence, relative truth, memory and erasure, marginality and urbanism, the male gaze, and the sea as a metaphor, all of which resonate with the history and reality of Antwerp. It is the structure, themes and character archetypes of Antwerp that M HKA takes its inspiration from as modes of reflection in this exhibition, titled «Amberes» – referring to the book’s title in its original Spanish.