The Belgian Wave (triptych)

Acrylic on canvas, 260 x 110 cm, 2019.

On the 30th of March 1990, something strange happened in the skyes nearby Brussel. We don’t know exactly what. But it actually happened.

The inspiration

During the March of the 1990, 13500 people were witnesses of an unprecedented event; 2500 of these people described with richness of detail the sight of a mysterious object in the sky: a triangular object with orangy lights at the three vertices and one big light in the center. Around 23h of the 30^th of March the radar operators in Glons and Semmerzake, assigned to the control of the air traffic, intercepted an anomalous signal identifying an object flying in a strange way in the area at the east of Brussels.  At 00:05 two F-16 left the Beuvechain Air Base to contact the unknown object. The two pilots declared, after their patrolling, that the object was impossible to approach: its maneuvers and flight technique were nothing the pilots could consider humanly possible. Attending their witness the object was capable of accelerations such that the human body could not bear (from 420 km/h to 1010 km/h in 1s). The object after a few minutes from the visual contact with the F-16s disappeared quickly from the radars and from the view of the pilots and earth observers. The authorities dismissed the case, accepting every possible rational theory proposed about the peculiar event.

This story is the apotheosis of a long series of UFO sightings (approx. 200) recorded between 1989 and 1990: this series of events became famous as “the belgian wave”. A story of mystery, hope and disillusion, mass obsession, real and fake contributes.