{"id":11742,"date":"2025-12-26T13:56:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T11:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pierremertens.be\/?post_type=werken&p=11742"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:38:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T07:38:31","slug":"overs-for-the-world-moshi","status":"publish","type":"werken","link":"http:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/","title":{"rendered":"Covers for Moshi"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Covers<\/em> is an exhibition running from December 3 to May 9, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, in the town of Moshi.
The exhibition marks the launch of a knowledge centre for accessible care for children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus.<\/p>\n

The exhibition is built around two intertwined lines: decolonisation and care.
It raises the question of how art, knowledge, and responsibility can free themselves from old power structures, and how they can take root again in local reality, shared ownership, and human dignity.<\/p>\n

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The exhibition brought together work by Mertens, drawn from earlier exhibitions that had never before been shown in this context, in dialogue with work by four Tanzanian artists. Rather than functioning as a retrospective, the exhibition presented a contextual reinterpretation of existing work.<\/p>\n

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Five of the six works by Mertens originated in his participation in the East African Biennales.<\/p>\n

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A collaborative mural, originally created in Dar es Salaam, was re-executed for this exhibition as a painted entrance gate to the site. Mertens realized this work together with the Tanzanian artists David Valerian Mlay and Prince John Hugo.<\/p>\n

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A central work in the exhibition is a reinterpretation of Les Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon by Pablo Picasso. In the original painting, Picasso used African masks within a modernist idiom. In an initial version for the East African Biennale, Mertens, Ricardo Brey, Mulugeta Tafesse, and Willo Gonnissen made a symbolic intervention to return this appropriated visual language to Africa. In Moshi, four Tanzanian artists: Lilian Munuo, Lightness Jonas, David Valerian Mlay and Prince John Hugo realized a new version of the work, complemented by pieces from their own oeuvre.<\/p>\n

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African Heroes, a work on kanga fabric, departs from the city map of Dar es Salaam. Together with fellow artist Willo Gonnissen, Mertens overlaid this map with the life lines of a hand and a star chart. The names of the stars were replaced by those of African heroes, often silenced or erased by colonial history. In Moshi, the work became interactive: visitors added the names of their own heroes in large numbers, allowing the work to evolve into a collective, living memory.<\/p>\n

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Visitors could add their own heroes<\/p>\n

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Moringa originated from an earlier socio-artistic project with women with a migrant background and visualizes the often invisible expertise required for sustainable integration into the labor market.<\/p>\n

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During the opening on December 3rd, seven moringa trees were planted around the building as a living reference to 7000 Oaks by Joseph Beuys for Documenta. The trees function as carriers of time\u2014growing, demanding care, and oriented toward the future.<\/p>\n

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The work African Values, originally developed in the studio using IV bags, was reconstructed in Moshi with locally sourced materials. Instead of bags, plastic bottles were used\u2014not arranged in a single line but distributed throughout the entire building. Through the bottles, African values written in Swahili are legible\u2014values that came under pressure through the colonial past. Visitors had to literally search for these words in corridors, corners, and even sanitary spaces.<\/p>\n

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\"\"\"\"Ubuntu \u2013 Shared humanity
\nUmoja \u2013 Unity
\nUshirikiano \u2013 Cooperation
\nHeshima \u2013 Respect
\nHuruma \u2013 Compassion
\nWajibu \u2013 Responsibility
\nUaminifu \u2013 Trust, faithfulness
\nHaki \u2013 Justice
\nUkarimu \u2013 Hospitality, generosity
\nSubira \u2013 Patience, perseverance
\nAmani \u2013 Peace
\nUhai \u2013 Life<\/p>\n

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Specifically for this exhibition, a monumental portrait of a child with hydrocephalus was added to the Loving Care series, in which Mertens created twelve paintings measuring two by one and a half meters of untreated children in the Philippines. The work was installed outdoors at the entrance and serves as the visual and ethical anchor of the exhibition.<\/p>\n

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Lightness Jonas<\/h3>\n

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Lilian Munuo<\/h3>\n

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Prince John Hugo<\/h3>\n

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David Valerian Mlay<\/h3>\n

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More photos from the exhibition<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12045,"template":"","class_list":["post-11742","werken","type-werken","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCovers for Moshi - Pierre Mertens<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Covers for Moshi - Pierre Mertens\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"    Covers is an exhibition running from December 3 to May 9, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, in the town of...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pierre Mertens\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-03-26T07:38:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/collage-2.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"534\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"567\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"13 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/\",\"name\":\"Covers for Moshi - Pierre Mertens\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/nl\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/pierremertens.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/collage-2.webp\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-12-26T11:56:16+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-03-26T07:38:31+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/pierremertens.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/collage-2.webp\",\"contentUrl\":\"http:\/\/pierremertens.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/collage-2.webp\",\"width\":534,\"height\":567},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/overs-for-the-world-moshi\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Werken\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/en\/works\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Covers for Moshi\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/nl\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/pierremertens.be\/nl\/\",\"name\":\"Pierre Mertens\",\"description\":\"Pierre Mertens is een belgisch artiest afkomstig uit Antwerpen. 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