Anne Wetsi Mpoma een toegewijde galerie directeur!

Anne Wetsi Mpoma is an art historian, independent curator and thinker on decolonization. She is also the founder in 2009 of the non-profit organization Nouveau Système Artistique (N.S.A.). This association actively promotes social cohesion and awareness of the experiences of people from the South. It trains, realizes and supports arts and artists from the African diasporas in Belgium while creating bridges with cultural actors from the African continent.
This results in the foundation of the Wetsi Art Gallery from October 2019, a contemporary and modern art space based in Brussels. It is a place dedicated to the revalorization of the artistic productions of Afro-Belgian, Afro-descendant and African artists. Located on the former industrial site of the CityGate, the Wetsi Art Gallery organizes exhibitions, conferences, performances but also discussions. All this, with the aim of decolonizing the public space and offering a greater visibility to the Afro creation in Belgium. To this end, Anne Wetsi, who happens to be trilingual (FR/EN/NL), collaborates with many European, national and regional associations and institutions.
As an example, from 2014 to 2017, Anne Wetsi was part of the African Diaspora Expert Group consulted by the AfricaMuseum to co-create its new permanent exhibition. She is also part of the expert group drafting the first report of the federal parliamentary commission investigating Belgium’s colonial past.
Most recently, in 2020, she teamed up with Café Congo. This cultural center of and for the diaspora is also located at CityGate, together they organize the Arts Congo Eza exhibition. The aim of this event was to show the work of Congolese artists from Belgium at the Royal Park in Brussels. This project is a celebration of hybrid identities and aims to bring little-known artists into dialogue with a wider public. It is anchored in Anne Wetsi’s research on colonial history and on the invisibilization of certain narratives in the phenomena of transmission. The decolonization of the urban space through art allows us to manifest and inform about the existence and importance of groups that have also participated in the construction of our cities.