One Day I Will Make The Onion Cry

During One Day I Will Make the Onion Cry, you will have the chance to participate in a one-on-one ritual with Barbara Raes for a week. In her practice Beyond the Spoken, Raes, artistic director at NTGent, has been creating tailor-made rituals for years. These rituals provide a space for hidden forms of loss. Now, Raes is integrating her private practice into a theatrical context for the first time.

One Day I Will Make the Onion Cry gives space and shape to the grief associated with solastalgia, the sorrow for something that is not yet lost. The sadness already arises, even though the real farewell has yet to come.

Together with visual artist and BERLIN scenographer Manu Siebens, Raes transforms several spaces in De Expeditie into a poetic landscape where the connection between the overproduction of onions, the tears for what will change, and the interpretation of our tears becomes tangible. A place where you are invited to embrace the sorrow for what will one day disappear.

One Day I Will Make the Onion Cry is a creation as part of YouTurn. Raes and Siebens breathe new life into the onion machine from the 2011 BERLIN production Land’s End.

From October 4 to 10, 2024, the renewed installation will be open to the public. During the day, it will serve as the setting and pathway for a one-on-one ritual with Barbara Raes. At other times, Victoria Deluxe will further explore the questions and emotions evoked by the installation.


Barbara Raes is part of the artistic direction of NTGent and founder of Beyond The Spoken, a private practice. She worked as programme and artistic director at Arts Centre BUDA and VIERNULVIER from 2000 until 2014, when she took time to recharge her batteries and reorient herself. She trained as a funeral celebrant at Green Fuse in Totnes (UK). From 2015 to 2018 she worked as a researcher at KASK, School of Arts. Drawing on the knowledge and experience she acquired, she now acts as a unique connector between art, care, leave-taking and rituals.

Barbara was guest curator of Theater aan Zee #2018, for which she developed Sun Day Child. This ritual for children with a major experience of loss has since been performed annually at various locations (including in Ghent’s Book Tower). Together with Colin Van Eeckhout (Amenra), in 2019 Barbara curated the programme ‘Amen & Beyond ‘. This ten-day event around mourning and loss ended with a big fire ritual in the Citadel Park. In recent years, Barbara Raes has also organized the international programme U.Loss (Berlin, Amsterdam, Dublin, Antwerp and Brussels), in which she coaches artists to create and carry out their own farewell rituals.

Besides her involvement in public rituals and her work as a curator, Barbara is the founder of Beyond the Spoken. In this workshop for unrecognized loss, she creates farewell rituals with artists for life’s large and small turning points (dismissal, surgery, divorce, etc.). Her private practice is known for its sustainability and artistic perspective.