Order tickets
Order tickets
zicht op installatie in Vooruit 2021
Niccolo Quaresima

Universal Tongue

Vogue, twerking, flash mobs, Sufism, or musical chairs? This autumn, dive into the universal language of dance with the video installation by visual artist Anouk Kruithof. Wander among the many screens or take your time to absorb it all. You’ll be introduced to a wide range of dance styles, all collected from social media. You'll see that dance is, in fact, a language shared by many cultures—spreading virally and traveling across continents.

    Friday 24 October 2025 until Sunday 4 January 2026 from 10:00 to 17:00

Visual artist Anouk Kruithof is fascinated by dance as a form of self-expression and empowerment. This led her to research dance styles from around the world. In this video installation, Kruithof shows that dance is actually a universal language, expressed across different cultures and subcultures. Dance also spreads through the internet, crossing all cultural boundaries.

With the help of an international team of 52 researchers, Kruithof collected 8,800 videos from social media—totaling 250 hours of footage and featuring 1,000 dance styles from all 196 countries in the world. This material was edited into a four-hour dynamic dance video installation, shown across eight screens displaying a total of 32 hours of moving images.

Anouk Kruithof

Anouk Kruithof (Dordrecht, 1981) is a visual artist. She works with sculpture, photography, collage, video, books, websites, and (social) interventions in public space.

Kruithof seeks to expose "the nerves of our time" by addressing social, psychological, and ethical dilemmas. She brings a highly idiosyncratic perspective to a world where the personal has become political. Constantly shifting between digital and physical realms of experience, Kruithof explores a collective state of mind rooted not only in the material world but often in something amorphous.

She sketches a world composed of a relentless stream of edited, constructed, and patched-together images that have lost their credibility—resulting in a reality that is fully scripted and subject to ongoing post-production.

Zicht op installatie in Cinekid AMS

Cinekid AMS 2018

- Cinekid AMS
Zicht op installatie in Voorlinden

Voorlinden 2022

- Vincent Basler
Installation view at Museum Tinguely, Anouk Kruithof, «Universal Tongue», 2018 © 2022 Museum Tinguely

Installation view at Museum Tinguely, Anouk Kruithof, «Universal Tongue», 2018 © 2022 Museum Tinguely, Basel; photo: Matthias Willi

- Matthias Willi

Dans in de stad / Dance in the city

The MAS exhibits 'Universal Tongue' as a result of research into online dance communities and heritage.

ErfgoedLab Antwerpen searches the city for less visible cultural heritage. People share their traditions, passions and what they value today also online. Do online platforms contribute to passing on, but also transforming dance? How is the past present in dance videos? Are online groups and profiles formed around dance also heritage communities? Where are the similarities or differences with the physical world? 

Practical information

  • Where: 3th floor
  • When: from 24 October 2025 to 4 January 2026
  • Ticket: free contribution

Subscribe to our newsletter