EXHIBITION
The Geopolitics of Infrastructure — Contemporary Perspectives
13 June – 21 September 2025
M HKA, Antwerp
Tekla Aslanishvili, Mirwan Andan & Iswanto Hartono, Winnie Claessens, Köken Ergun & Fetra Danu, Köken Ergun & Tashi Lama, Assem Hendawi, Jean Katambayi Mukendi, Pejvak, Shahana Rajani, Sojung Jun, The Question of Funding, Jonas Staal, Zheng Mahler. Exhibition architecture by Studio PARA~.
Exhibition curated by Nav Haq
Big Ideas of Frictionless Frontiers
Contemporary Perspectives on the Geopolitics of Infrastructure
Nav Haq
Infrastructure is big ideas. It underpins the global circulation of objects, ideas, information and people. More palpably, it finds its purpose in relation to our habitat, facilitating the flows, exchanges and support structures that shape our lives, livelihoods and societies. From our mobile phones to the products and food we buy, the water that runs out of the tap to the train taking us on a journey, it all requires substantial infrastructure, or even multiple networks of infrastructures working in synchronicity. It should come as no surprise then, when something that is normally invisible becomes increasingly all-encompassing to the point of dependency, that it becomes hugely topical.
The conquering of time and space — for these frontiers to be ‘frictionless’ — is the goal of infrastructure: to bring us closer together, to be able to share and distribute quicker and across greater distances and borders. Infrastructure is implemented on trans-national and even global proportions. We just have to think of the vast network of undersea cables that is required to facilitate our daily usage of the internet. It configures the human world and its production of knowledge and prosperity. Infrastructure embodies the idea of a world in motion.
In the general organisation of societies, we can identify two mutually sustaining forces — the ‘superstructure’ as the intangible force that exists in a mutual engagement with ‘infrastructure’ as its correlating tangible force. If we consider the ‘superstructure’ as the institutional provision of such things as politics, law and governance, culture, philosophy, ideology, belief systems, science and knowledge, ‘infrastructure’ most visibly facilitates such things as trade, transport, manufacturing, energy and communication, as well as key facets of the public sphere including health, education, utilities and the arts.
Infrastructure in the contemporary world also incorporates such things as tech and big data; urban planning such as with new capital cities in nations as Indonesia and Egypt; automation; the algorithmic management of global urban spaces, and vast railway corridors such as China’s reimagining of the historic Silk Road in the form of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), through to the deep water sea ports such as Gwadar Port in Pakistan. Yet not many people know that there are direct trains between Tangshen and Antwerp linking two major ports either end of Eurasia. We should also acknowledge that infrastructure also encompasses war and defence systems, and by implication also the destruction of other infrastructures. Infrastructure is many things. The classical elements — earth, wind, water, fire — are exploited in a context of overlapping jurisdiction, transnational circulation, rapid urbanisation, and the structuring of labour. What has to happen for a rare mineral in the ground to become a battery for a phone or electric vehicle? From collaboration and competition, to dependency and subjugation, environmental degradation and human displacement, infrastructure is a major geopolitical factor between nations.
Infrastructure has an unusual status. It is itself both a ‘thing’ and the relation between things. This duality of being simultaneously visible and invisible, tangible and intangible, and just as much about its maintenance as its promise, sees infrastructure as something rather complex, even conceptual, and thus less easily readable. However, with the distinct ability to read how things happen across space and time, infrastructure can be examined, particularly through technological, economic, logistical, political and social perspectives. Many artists understand the urgency to do so.
Infrastructure is after all a source of enchantment. It is often understood as the current and future relation between things. Whether public, private or some hybrid of both, infrastructure projects have become potent symbols of modernisation, aspiration, influence and power in many part of the world. In fact, we see increasingly that ‘infrastructure space’ is becoming so vast that it is increasingly becoming the ‘superstructure’, and is now a form of ‘extrastatecraft’, to use the term used by urbanist Keller Easterling, strengthening state power as its proxy.
This exhibition, titled The Geopolitics of Infrastructure, presents the work of a generation of artists bringing contemporary perspectives to the particular question of infrastructure in the geopolitical context. Artists, through their practice, are thinking trans-nationally. They consider in great detail the political commitments, imagination and power relations of infrastructure. The exhibition presents their examinations of how such structures are utilised to function as organisational tools across interlinked zones, very often as part of the practice of statecraft. Infrastructure is a nerdsome or banal topic to some, sexy to others, and perhaps indifferent for most. When we turn on the tap, how many people want to think about what has to happen for the water to reach us, and who might be affected along the way? How does information reach your smartphone? Yet infrastructure is amongst the biggest factors shaping our societies. It often only becomes topical when things go wrong or take a turn for the worse. Think, where will Europe’s supply of gas come from if it no longer wants to be reliant on Russia’s supply?
These such questions are the kind that this exhibition seeks to ask. Perhaps also marking the big return of geopolitics in contemporary art, such artistic investigations reflect a world grappling with everything from trade wars, fake news, rising gas prices and conflict. All of this exposing the landscape to complex geopolitics. With an awareness that geopolitics also shapes the conditions of practice for artists, the exhibition will present such research-based practices and reflections, often with deep socio-political engagement. For this reason, the exhibition also crucially considers the possibilities of artistic imagination in the conceptualisation of new and alternative models of infrastructure. Why be dependent on others if we can ourselves invent new infrastructure? This is certainly a fundamental question being asked within the cultural sphere, and particularly in places where there has been no sustainable infrastructure for supporting artistic practice.
We are grateful to all the participating artists — Tekla Aslanishvili, Mirwan Andan & Iswanto Hartono, Winnie Claessens, Köken Ergun & Fetra Danu, Köken Ergun & Tashi Lama, Assem Hendawi, Jean Katambayi Mukendi, Pejvak, Shahana Rajani, Sojung Jun, The Question of Funding, Jonas Staal and Zheng Mahler — for their meaningful engagement. They elucidate their unique insights into the ramifications of infrastructure across politics, society and culture. One could identify what they are undertaking as research-driven practices, taking into account specific regional contexts and situations, that manifests in various forms from experimental documentary to propositional models and prototypes.
There are perhaps two other characteristics of this exhibition that are worth noting. Firstly, rather than historical reflection, the ‘contemporary perspectives’ of the subtitle situates the focus very much on the present, looking at what is unfolding whilst we live our lives, including its human impact. The tendency to focus on infrastructure is also no doubt international. In relation to this, the second further characteristic is its geographical scope. With most major infrastructure projects taking place within Eurasia, the exhibition develops upon M HKA’s focus on the practices and affairs that take place within Eurasia’s multipolarity. All of this together, The Geopolitics of Infrastructure intends to give a certain hypothesis on where art is, which in summary is that artists are demonstrating the capacity to reflect on the time, space and politics of infrastructure in today’s world. They help us to understand better how the world works.
There are several collaborators we would like to offer our sincerest gratitude. Firstly, the experimental exhibition architecture design has been made by Studio PARA~, who have translated the thematic of the exhibition into a pragmatic, elegant and sustainable form. The Research Summit Archipelago of Artistic Practices taking place in conjunction with the exhibition is co-organised by Jubilee — Platform for Artistic Research, bringing together many fascinating artists and researchers for a thoroughly enriching discursive programme on the urgent question of sustainable research infrastructure for the artistic sphere. For The Geopolitics of Infrastructure, we have experimented with a digital ecology for our editorial work, and for this we particularly thank Nick Axel and Merve Bedir for our collaboration, commissioning an ambitious series of insightful texts for e-flux Architecture’s New Silk Roads platform.
We would also very much like to thank the Han Nefkens Foundation for supporting the commissioning of the wonderful new artwork by Shahana Rajani. The generosity of the foundation, as well as their focus on artistic quality means a great deal in supporting creative expression in today’s landscape of increasing cultural confinement. We would also like to express our thanks to the SBS Foundation and Mondriaan Fonds for their generous support for the participation of Sojung Jun and Jonas Staal respectively. Last but not least, the exhibition takes place within the framework of the L’Internationale confederation’s current ‘Museum of the Commons’ supported by the European Union. As a founding partner, the confederation has brought important opportunities, exchanges and new knowledge for M HKA, and we look forward to developing further our shared future.