From November 5 to 14, Belgian Week will take place in Cuba, which this 2025 celebrates its two decades. Its program includes visual arts, audiovisual, theater and music actions in Havana and Matanzas.
“A closed figure that makes us think about all that great journey that has brought us here, where many people have joined, have collaborated in different aspects of art, culture and cooperation,” he tells OnCuba Ana Iris Llovera Pérez, Culture and Cooperation Attaché of the Belgian Embassy in Havana.
The exhibition “20th Anniversary of the Belgian Week in Cuba” will be the main celebration action. Curated by Lysbeth Daumont and Lilien Trujillo, the exhibition will open on November 7 at 5 pm in the Vitrina de Valonia in Old Havana, and will constitute a union of posters, promotional materials, photographs and audiovisuals that allow a retrospective look at the event.
The general program of Belgian Week this year also has the particularity of providing a large space for activities for children, its organizers explained at a press conference.
The Swiss company Andrayas returns to Cuba for this occasion. The group will have its first presentation on November 6 at 11:30 am together with Teatro de las Estaciones in a show at the Teatro Sauto, in Matanzas.
Then, Andrayas will present his theater show once again on the island Violi-Voilà at the Vitrina de Valonia on November 7 at 2 pm, and the visual theater show Whomyn on November 12 at 3 pm at Nave Oficio de Isla.
Other important spaces for childhood will come through animation with screenings of short films resulting from the cooperation between the ICAIC Animation Studios and the Belgian animation studio Caméra-etc. The screenings will take place on November 5 at 2 pm at the ICAIC Animation Studios and on November 11 at the same time in La Manigua.
Music will also have highlights with the presentations in Cuba of Belgian artists sharing stages with Cuban musicians.
The Dyad duo, composed of accordionist Didier Laloy and double bassist Adrien Tyberghein, will offer a concert at the José White hall in the city of Matanzas, on November 6 at 3 pm. The presentation is conceived as the official opening of the Belgian Week and will have Cuban percussionist Adel González as a guest.
Another concert worth highlighting will take place on November 8 at 8 pm at the Oratorio San Felipe Neris, in which pianist Jef Neve and the duo Dyad will join the stage on the Belgian side; and the clarinetist Janio Abreu and the Lyceum Mozartiano Orchestra of Havana for the Cuban side.
As a space to enjoy the talent of all the artists invited to the Week, there will be the “Belgian Soorié (night)” on November 9 at 8 pm at Loft Habana, in Old Havana.
Architecture will be another of the arts attended in this twentieth edition of the event. On November 11 at 10:30 am, the Belgian visual artist Gaspard Giersé, from the Brussels Directorate of Monuments and Sites, will offer a conference at Nodo Habana, which will serve as a prelude to the exhibition “100 years of Art Deco: from Brussels to Havana.”
The exhibition constitutes the last action of the Belgian Week in Cuba this year and will feature photographs by Néstor Martí, illustrations by Enrique García Cabrera, comics by Alexander Izquierdo and works by Giersé.
