The seeds of the exhibition Moving Archives: Foundlings were planted two years ago when Van Stappen visited the archives of the Public Centre for Social Welfare (OCMW) in Bruges. From these historical records dating back to the 12th century (and with help from staff in understanding some of the Middle Dutch texts), the Flemish artist was inspired by the stories of foundlings and abandoned children that she discovered.

These centuries-old archives reminded her of more recent stories she had read in newspapers, so she started an exploration about foundlings in contemporary society. Her research took her to convents where she talked to nuns and heard tales similar to those depicted in the film The Magdalene Sisters, brought her into contact with organisations that support abandoned children and acquainted her with today’s options for mothers who are forced to abandon their babies.

One such option is a “baby hatch”, as set up by Moeders voor Moeders (Mothers for Mothers) in Antwerp, which is a safe place where a mother can anonymously leave her newborn and any information she wants the baby to have. “We don’t think the hatch is the best solution to an unwanted birth, but we think it should be as accessible as possible,” the Antwerp group explains in a video playing at the Moving Archives exhibition at the Memling Museum in Bruges. The video screen becomes a kind of hatch for foundlings as it forms the central block in a wall of stacked register boxes temporarily moved from the Bruges archives.

Next to this is what Van Stappen considers the highlight: a video of Chris Atkins. Abandoned as a baby in Hong Kong and adopted by a family in the UK, Atkins is now a trustee at Norcap, a UK organisation that supports adults affected by adoption. “I never thought I’d have an interview with a foundling,” Van Stappen tells me. “She gives insights in ways you wouldn’t know. She offers hope.”

Van Stappen’s research also took her to the London Foundling Museum, which tells the story of the city’s first home for abandoned children and the involvement of the painter Hogarth and the composer Handel. “I don’t think it is a coincidence or an accident that artists – many of them childless – have taken care of abandoned children. Every piece of art is in fact essentially a foundling,” writes Van Stappen, who has no children herself, in the accompanying catalogue.

The London museum contributed images and documents, some of which are put alongside quotes from people who Van Stappen interviewed. “Your name and life are all that I could give you, but both were taken away from me.” These are the words of Renée de Bode- Grollée who a few decades ago was made to give up her child as she had it out of wedlock. Another unidentified female interviewee says: “I told very few people... It’s like ‘coming out’. I don’t know if it was because I was adopted. I think it was because I’d been found.”

The panels form the start of a “procession” that cuts through the centre of the mediaeval attic space of the museum, a building where the poor, the ill and foundlings were cared for by nuns and monks. In front of the placards is Van Stappen’s bronze sculpture – finished just before the opening – of a naked, pregnant woman with a baby whispering in her ear. The baby could be the child she’s expecting or the child she has lost. What is important to the artist, who refers to the sculpture as “a monument to foundlings and their mothers”, is that the child will forever remain an inherent part of the woman.

In the room next door – originally the nuns’ dormitory – are three video installations by Van Stappen, who has worked as an artist ever since completing her studies at Sint-Lucas art school in Ghent. A big pond reflecting seagulls circling around, a February sky with the white lines of airplanes crossing the screen and a white dress swirling in the sea close to the shore, battered by waves.

Each video took months of work but, when she started out, she wasn’t sure where or how she would use them. With a contract for the exhibition finally presented in June, she knew exactly where the videos with their themes of loss and untold stories would fit in. Nearby, the translucent white frame and pale blue wheels of a baby buggy look deceptively simple. “I begged on my knees” for this to be made, Van Stappen says with her broad smile. In fact, the craftsman had to make two in the hope that one would survive the technically complex production process.

There’s also a work inspired by a youth group’s discovery of a child’s body in a black plastic bag during a cleanup of the river Lieve in East Flanders and a projection of the attic’s rosary window onto the floor with a tiny coffin in the centre. Van Stappen hopes that visitors will leave something next to the coffin so that a makeshift memorial to all foundlings is created during the exhibition’s nine months.

Moving Archives: Foundlings
Until 29 August
Memling Museum Mariastraat 38, Bruges
www. museabrugge.be