IKAT Exhibition, 2021
On Sunday 21 March 2021, the Moluccan Historical Museum launched the virtual temporary exhibition IKAT (‘interwoven’). In this exhibition 21 artists of Moluccan descent or connection to the Moluccas participated. They alternated in a relay of 7 blocks and with their work they reacted to the Moluccan presence in the Netherlands. The exhibition lasted until 31 October 2021. I participated with AMI – The Moluccan artist collective “Awareness Moluccan Identity”.
I made 2 mixed media collages. I used photos from the archives of MHM. Both works show a combination of life in the barracks and the landscape of the . What I want to portray is the two worlds in which the Moluccans found themselves while living in the residential camps. Waiting and full of hope until they could go back. “We are here on Dutch soil with our bodies and our feet, but we dream and long for our home, our home there, so far away. Our feet here, but our hearts and our minds go there. Between two worlds, not quite here and not quite there. It is also the associated struggle, confusion, sadness, homesickness and pain that the situation brought them. It is feeling abandoned and ‘stuck’. The book “Gesloten koffers” by Sylvia Pessireron helped me a lot to really understand what it was like for the Moluccan soldiers and their families when they just arrived in the Netherlands and for years afterwards.
The two works are part of a series called “One day we will go back home”. Both are made in the same way with the same materials: Digital photographs from the MHM archive printed, chalk paper, sewing thread, kraft wrapping paper on archival bamboo paper in a frame of recycled pinewood.
MAHAI Exhibition 2021
2 & 3 october 2021, AMI -Awareness Moluccan Identity- organised a 2 day exhibition in Baarn (NL).
I made 9 mixed media collages, with photos from around 1900 from the colonial era. Most of the photos come from the book ‘Tanimbar’ in which the photographic work of Petrus Drabbe is collected. Others are from the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam.
With these collages I try to make the invisible visible. By taking the ‘subjects’ out of their context, I have the freedom to add other layers and dimensions. These newly added layers and dimensions represent the energies of our ancestors. Our ancestors, who nowadays surround us with love, help, guide, teach, protect and whisper wisdom to us if we listen carefully enough and dare to be quiet. At the same time, these people in the collages are our ancestors, who are now present around and within us, in the form of energies, in the unseen.
Materials: Bamboo mixed media paper, oilpaint, fineliner, oak wooden handmade frames. 35×35 cm.