For several months, the area in front of the De Singel Concert and Exhibition Hall’s façade was blocked by scaffolding, behind which one could make out Louise Bourgeois-style constructions. On June 7, as if at the wave of a fairy’s wand, the fence collapsed and the audience was presented with the installation “You will find companionship in greener grounds” by Temitayo Ogunbiyi, an artist from Nigeria. Her hometown Lagos (30 million) has a population larger than that of Belgium and is also multinational. The artist has transformed a former asphalt field into a green vegetable garden-playground with giant stainless steel pipes symbolizing the road from Lagos to Antwerp.

As you can understand from the title, the green space was intended by Temitao to be a meeting place for neighbors of different nationalities, this evening through cooking. Her artistic practice aims to honor and share differences in culinary choices. Maintaining ties to memories of immigrants homes, she uses this as an entry point into the diversity of Antwerp. Taking her herbs, spices and recipes with her from Nigeria, Temitao offered a collaboration to the multicultural organization De Kompaan in Antwerp’s most ethnically diverse neighborhood Borgerhout. The artist’s project is multimedia — on the site as seats (!) — a concrete oriental tajin and a Mexican cauldron with a lid for cooking. Cooking unites all peoples.

Together with landscape architect Johanna Bendlin, the artist selected a variety of edible plants native to Flanders and planted them, along with herbs and vegetables used by immigrant communities, in three small gardens around the pillars of the installation. Native plants include varieties of chicory, sea buckthorn and blackberries. Non-native varieties include curly blue tea and cerasi (bitter gourd), Sichuan pepper and eva (cow pea). Embedded in this diversity is a transnational relationship, where the same plants growing in different places can reflect the movement of people across lands and seas.

For the playground — designed to be used, not just admired — Temitao chose a Manila rope, twisted according to a hair styling technique used in Lagos, but which over time has also been reflected in hair traditions in Latin America, the US and Europe. Adults and children in the neighborhood have embraced the innovation with genuine delight.

“You will find companionship in greener grounds” is part of a collaboration between neighbors: the De Singel Concert and Exhibition Center and the Middemheim Outdoor Sculpture Museum.

Both venues will host 4 weekends of the Come Closer and On Sculpture project this summer. As a neighbor of both institutions, I will try to see at least part of all 4 as much as possible.