With Gossip: Magic and Marginalisation, Kasteel Wijlre estate brings together contemporary art and regional history in a layered exhibition exploring exclusion, connectedness and imagination. Taking South Limburg as its point of departure, the exhibition examines how historical processes of marginalisation – such as the witch persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – continue to resonate in the present day.

At its core are the often-overlooked voices of women who held knowledge of care, the healing properties of nature and forms of community-building. Their stories are only fragmentarily recorded in traditional historiography, yet they persist through rituals, language and shared practices. Gossip takes this silence as its starting point, revaluing the concept as a form of solidarity, exchange and collective knowledge.

The title refers to a historical practice of female connectedness and knowledge-sharing. Originally, the term ‘gossip’ denoted relationships of kinship and care between women. Within the exhibition, gossip is employed as a method: a way of gathering, exchanging and transmitting. This approach is extended through a public programme featuring shared meals, workshops, rituals and conversations.

The exhibition approaches magic not as superstition, but as a form of intention, connection and creation, closely aligned with artistic practice. At the same time, it reveals how marginalisation persists as a recurring mechanism, targeting those who are perceived as ‘other’ or ‘uncontrollable’.

In close dialogue with the natural surroundings of the estate, Gossip brings together work by local and (inter)national artists: melanie bonajo, Leonie Brandner & Nina Guo, Mounir Eddib, Natasja Kensmil, Shani Leseman, Dakota Magdalena Mokhammad, Project Wilgenvrouwen (beatrice pittman & Pleun Moons), Lara Schnitger, Luca Soudant and herman de vries. Gossip is curated by guest curator Marjolein van der Loo.