The horrors persist but so do I

From 07.05 until 12.07.26 in Z33

22 May 2026

Installation view of *The horrors persist but so do I* at Z33, Hasselt. gabi dao, Resurrect me as a Parasite, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Lou Lou Sainsbury. Photo: Silvia Cappellari

How do we live with fear, loss, and alienation while still finding the strength to continue? In The horrors persist but so do I, gabi dao explores precisely this turning point: the moment when disruption gives way to transformation, and transitional states reveal themselves as spaces of possibility.

The exhibition opens with a series of sculptural works. These small, house-like structures, made from wood and handmade ceramic tiles, reference spiritual architecture from Vietnam and other parts of East and Southeast Asia. Traditionally holding offerings such as food, drink, and incense, these structures are sites of veneration, care and transmission. They also provide comfort to ‘hungry ghosts’: restless souls that have died unjustly.

gabi dao’s shrines are not dedicated to specific individuals, but to a broader practice of devotion. These shrines are adorned with imagery of bats, which are often seen positioned in thresholds like windows, roofs or doorways. In dao’s work, they evoke guardians that move between realms, echoing spiritual intermediaries such as angels in Christianity.

In the second room, dao presents the film Resurrect Me as a Parasite, made in collaboration with artist Lou Lou Sainsbury. The film was partly shot in a cave dedicated to Mary Magdalene in southern France and follows hybrid figures moving between human, animal, and fantasy. Parasitic beings such as vampires or mosquitos—bodies that live through other bodies—are not portrayed as threats, but as dependent and interconnected. With a mixture of horror and humor, they reveal forms of proximity that are uncomfortable yet intimate.

Queer and trans communities, when confronted with exclusion and violence, are continuously forced to develop new forms of resilience, resistance, and collective imagination. Within The horrors persist but so do I, dao constructs an exhibition in which transformation emerges as a strategy for survival: a process of reinvention in which vulnerability and resistance converge, opening new possibilities for existence and expression.

About the artist

gabi dao (b. 1991) works with film, installation, and ceramics. Their practice focuses on human connection within (super)natural worlds, examining and challenging how these relationships have been represented in popular Western media.

dao originates from the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (Vancouver, Canada), and currently lives and works in Rotterdam. Their work has previously been presented at venues including E-Flux Screening Room, the BFI London Film Festival, the Ljubljana Biennale, and the National Gallery of Canada.

Z33 and Jan van Eyck Academie

The exhibition is part of the ongoing collaboration between Z33 and the Jan van Eyck Academie, through which work by a resident artist is presented every two years. For this exhibition, dao is premiering a new series of sculptural works.

Curated by Kevin Gallagher.