Bianca Baldi at Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp

This autumn, Kunsthal Extra City presents Sea Through Skin, a solo exhibition by South African artist Bianca Baldi. Visually layered, the exhibition — curated by Joachim Naudts and Darly Benneker — explores the personal and politically charged phenomenon of racial passing — where individuals present themselves, or others perceive them, as belonging to a different racial group.

The exhibition marks the culmination of Baldi’s PhD in the arts at Sint Lucas Antwerp, titled Play-White: Racial Passing and Embodied Images. Through a multidisciplinary visual practice, Baldi reflects on how identity, perception, and power shape how we look and how we are looked at.

At the heart of the exhibition is the cuttlefish: a sea creature capable of changing colour, texture, and shape to adapt to its surroundings. For Baldi, the cuttlefish becomes a powerful symbol for camouflage, fluid identity, and the visual codes through which identity is read. The figure recurs across multiple works in the show, from film and photography to textiles and installation.

The sea flows through the exhibition as a poetic undercurrent — both as metaphor and memory. Baldi links her mother’s fear of water to the traumatic history of segregated beaches during apartheid in South Africa, where even the coastline was divided by race. This layered history serves as an intimate starting point for Baldi’s reflection on passing and visibility.

Sea Through Skin explores how identity is not fixed, but shaped by context, appearance, history and visual representation. Drawing from personal traces within her family history, Baldi weaves together broader cultural references — from pop culture to colonial archives — to open up a sensitive yet critical discourse on race and representation.

Bianca Baldi

Bianca Baldi (b. 1985, South Africa) lives and works in Brussels. Her work explores the role of narrative as a means of knowledge production in both fictional and historical contexts. She is particularly interested in the staging of identity and history, engaging with these themes through photography, film, writing, and publishing — often brought together in spatial installations.

Her work has been featured in international exhibitions and biennales, including Cameo at Grazer Kunstverein (Graz), Versipellis at Superdeals (Brussels), the 11th African Biennale of Photography (Bamako), the 11th Shanghai Biennale, Die Zelle at Kunsthalle Bern, and Open House at Kunstverein Braunschweig.

Kunsthal Extra City

For 20 years, Kunsthal Extra City has been a space to contemplate the evolving society through art. Located in the former Dominican monastery near Antwerp Central Station, Kunsthal Extra City has evolved into an accessible and inspiring venue for contemporary visual arts. With a spacious 1.000 m² exhibition area, Extra City stands as a significant mid-sized player in Antwerp’s visual arts scene. Extra City prioritizes showcasing non-commercial forms of visual art and focuses on new and underrepresented practices. The art hall aims to communicate in an approachable manner and warmly welcomes visitors.