Image: Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent
Afghan artist Aziz Hazara will appear at S.M.A.K. in Ghent on 13 September to discuss ‘Bow Echo’, a video installation from the museum’s collection. The artist talk will take place at 3pm in the museum’s auditorium and coincides with the finissage of the presentation of the work. Admission is free, with advance registration required via reservation@smak.be.
The programme will begin with a conversation between Hazara and S.M.A.K. collection specialist Thibaut Verhoeven. They will discuss the origins of ‘Bow Echo’ and the context in which it was made. The event will be held in English, giving visitors an opportunity to hear directly from the artist about a work that combines a spare visual action with an unsettling account of conflict and resistance.
Created in 2019, ‘Bow Echo’ shows five young Afghan boys struggling against powerful winds as they climb a large rock. Once they reach the top, they play kazoo-like instruments, producing a thin, nasal sound. S.M.A.K. describes the contrast between the harsh conditions of the highlands around Kabul and the fragile sound of the instruments as a poetic metaphor for the population’s resistance to the war in Afghanistan.
The work sits within Hazara’s broader practice, which uses photography, video, sound, text, programming and installation to examine identity, memory, archives, conflict, occupation and migration. According to S.M.A.K., his approach is not limited to a single Afghan perspective but addresses these subjects through a wider geopolitical lens. Hazara was born in 1992 in Wardak, Afghanistan, and lives and works in Kabul and Berlin.
Following the discussion with Verhoeven, Hazara will give a short lecture on ‘Coming Home’, a future project scheduled to be shown at SculptureCenter in New York in the autumn. The project offers a critique of the US-led NATO occupation of Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021. It focuses on the suburban-style enclave constructed by the US military around Bagram airport near Kabul, including fast-food outlets and recreational facilities.
For ‘Coming Home’, Hazara retrieves leftover materials abandoned at the site after the abrupt withdrawal of the US military and re-exhibits them in their country of origin. S.M.A.K. presents the lecture as a preview of the project alongside the artist’s discussion of ‘Bow Echo’, linking the museum’s collection work to Hazara’s continuing investigation of military presence, memory and the afterlife of occupation. The artist talk begins at 3pm on Sunday, 13 September 2026, at S.M.A.K., Jan Hoetplein 1, Ghent.
