Smaaklik is a public artwork created for the City of Gent and Africalia between 2010 and 2016.
It is more than an artwork, more than a bench, more than a place to sit. It is a site for gathering, an invitation to linger, and a social strategy disguised as urban furniture. The work unfolded over several years through conversations, negotiations, temporary placements, and a deep engagement with the neighbourhood of Ledeberg.
The project began in 2010 and was completed by 2012, though its final installation was delayed due to ongoing construction and indecision about its placement. Originally intended for a busy bus stop, an everyday site of visibility, movement, and encounter, the work was temporarily placed in a playground and a school before finding its permanent home in 2016 outside a new social development facility.
Smaaklik was developed through a participatory process, in close dialogue with the Ledebirds, a community music ensemble whose members performed at the opening. The Ledebirds are a vibrant and diverse group of musicians and singers whose members trace lineages from Italy, Palestine, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Iran, Eritrea and beyond. Along with other local organisations, including the municipal social welfare group Samenlevingsopbouw, the process unfolded in collaboration and exchange.
The work offers multiple configurations for seating and interaction. It invites conversation, waiting, resting and eating. The modular benches create possibilities for intimacy, solitude or open group dialogue. Surfaces allow for writing, sketching and sharing. It is adaptable, informal and responsive to the ways people already use space.
The name Smaaklik is inspired by the migrant food shops and vendors in Ledeberg where the word is commonly heard as a wish to enjoy your food. The project draws on this spirit of bringing people together around food and sharing.Smaaklik unsettles dominant ideas of sustainability to include questions of migrant visibility and presence in public space. In a neighbourhood where many migrant communities continue to face exclusion and erasure, the work quietly asserts the value of informal presence, of sitting together and being heard and seen.
Smaaklik, 2016, Centrumplein , Gent, Belgium.
Project Partners: Africalia and Stad Ghent