MÜNCHENSTEIN.- Kunsthaus Baselland is presenting “Mémoires Voyageuses,” a group exhibition that brings together eight international artists whose works move through questions of memory, displacement, family history, colonial legacies and the possibility of imagining new futures.
On view through August 16, 2026, the exhibition features works by Raphaël Barontini, Onome Ekeh, Joana Escoval, Binelde Hyrcan, Mateo Maté, Sofía Salazar Rosales, Aline Motta and Helena Uambembe. Across video, sculpture, textile, installation, sound, photography and performance, the artists consider how stories travel—through families, landscapes, bodies, archives and oral traditions—and how memory can become both fragile and transformative.
The exhibition begins from a simple but unsettled idea: memory is never fixed. Personal recollections, inherited stories, political realities and images from the news can shift, fade or become distorted over time. Some histories survive only through oral transmission, while others have been interrupted or erased by colonial violence, migration, war or the absence of written records. Rather than trying to recover a single, stable truth, the artists in “Mémoires Voyageuses” create spaces where fragments, speculation, beauty and care become ways of approaching what has been lost.
Curated by Ines Goldbach, Director and Curator of Kunsthaus Baselland, the exhibition places particular emphasis on storytelling as an act of responsibility. The show asks what it means to tell stories not only for ourselves, but also for those who came before us and for those who will come after. In this sense, memory is not treated as nostalgia, but as a living material—something that can shape identity, open dialogue and help us imagine another possible reality.
Landscape appears throughout the exhibition as a recurring thread. It is not simply a backdrop, but a carrier of memory and experience. In several works, nature becomes a place of listening, healing and transformation. The exhibition invites visitors to move through these artistic landscapes and bring their own memories into contact with the stories being told.
Among the participating artists, Raphaël Barontini presents monumental textile works that honor figures from Caribbean and African histories who have often been pushed to the margins of Western historical narratives. His vivid fabric collages blend fact, fiction, fantasy and what he calls “critical fabulation,” creating memorials for forgotten heroes and heroines.
Onome Ekeh, born in the United States and raised in Nigeria, uses video, sound, AI-generated imagery and code to explore narratives shaped by colonial history, migration and the erasure of Indigenous languages. Her installation creates what she describes as “corrective spaces,” where fragments of vanished worlds become openings toward beauty, freedom and future possibility.
The Lisbon-based artist Joana Escoval contributes delicate works in brass and other materials that move between sculpture, sound and invisible forces. Her installations invite visitors to think about breath, circulation, energy and the ways human beings are connected to the natural world.
In Binelde Hyrcan’s work, Angola becomes a place of memory, resilience and imagination. Through poetic videos and installations, the artist reflects on civil war, poverty, community and the ability to dream of a better future without abandoning one’s identity or cultural history.
Spanish artist Mateo Maté turns daily newspapers, toy trains and military uniforms into reflections on media saturation, war and the private impact of global events. His works ask how quickly news disappears from view, and what it would take for political and human catastrophes to remain in our memory long enough to change how we act.
Brazilian artist Aline Motta traces family histories marked by colonial erasure, enslavement and migration. In her video and textile installation “Filha Natural / Natural Daughter,” Motta follows oral accounts of her great-grandmother and uses water as a poetic vessel of memory, movement and ancestral connection.
Sofía Salazar Rosales, who works between Paris and Quito, creates sculptural works from modest and fragile materials that evoke gates, walls, architecture and everyday objects. Her practice reflects on Latin America, migration, agricultural economies, protection, exclusion and the emotional charge carried by objects and materials.
The exhibition also includes works by Helena Uambembe, whose practice gives form to personal and political histories connected to Angola, South Africa, colonialism and displacement. Her installation “How To Make a Mud Cake” appears playful at first, but gradually reveals deeper questions about trauma, inherited histories and the ways colonial narratives have shaped what is remembered and what is forgotten.
Together, the works in “Mémoires Voyageuses” resist easy answers. They do not seek certainty so much as connection. The exhibition suggests that memory can be incomplete and still meaningful; that stories can be speculative and still truthful; and that art can help us imagine futures beyond the violence, displacement and silences of the past.
“Mémoires Voyageuses” is on view at Kunsthaus Baselland, Helsinki-Strasse 5, 4142 Münchenstein, Switzerland, through August 16, 2026. The exhibition is accompanied by multilingual guided tours, workshops, holiday programs, sound performances and special programming during Art Basel.
