AIR in Southeast #2023

The exhibition AIR in Zuidoost # 2023 shows works by (inter)national artists who have participated this year in BijlmAIR, the artist-in-residence programme of CBK Zuidoost.

The starting point of a BijlmAIR-residency is to create new work that relates to or reflects on Amsterdam Southeast. The artists stayed at Heesterveld, where the BijlmAIR studio is located. The exhibition demonstrates that the society of Southeast (inter)national artists always manages to inspire in a special way.

While (inter)national artists came to Amsterdam Zuidoost to live and work, Patricia Ribas left for Brazil to shoot her latest film Para M., which focuses on the impact of Dutch colonial history.  

*BijlmAIR is an artist-in-residence of CBK Zuidoost, in collaboration with The Department of Painting and Sculpture of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Black Speaks Back

Black Ibis, The Spirit of Black Intimacies, installatie, multimedia, 2023

Black Ibis: The Spirit of Black Intimacies is the title of a new film project by the grassroots media organization “Black Speaks Back.” This project was commissioned by the Amsterdam-based art organization “If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution” as part of their Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies biennial program (2022-23) and is supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Mondriaan Fund, Ammodo, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, and Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie. The project has come to encompass a short film and podcast exploring notions and experiences of intimacy among African and Afro-Caribbean communities in the Netherlands. The film will premiere at Melkweg Cinema Amsterdam in January 2024.

As a culmination of their time in the CBK Zuidoost’s BijlmAIR residency program, Black Speaks Back will present an installation that includes materials from their research and production processes, such as audio elements from our 2022 Kitchen Table Talks, collective notes from scriptwriting at the CBK’s Heesterveld studio in February 2023, and behind-the-scenes footage from filming in summer 2023.

About the artists:

“Black Speaks Back” is a Belgo-Dutch grassroots platform founded in 2016 in Brussels and currently based in Amsterdam. We are dedicated to amplifying Black narratives from the Netherlands and Belgium, facilitating discussions, conducting art-based research, and creating poetic short films. “Zwarte Ibis” is led by Chris (Ci) Rickets, Emma-Lee Amponsah, Alexine Gabriela.

Lard Buurman

Work In Progress, multimedia installatie, 2023

Lard Buurman is working on a multi-year research project for a film project on the urban development of the H-Buurt in the Bijlmer and its impact on current residents and users. From the BijlmAir Residency you look out over the Hakfort parking garage. Next year it will be demolished to make way for an apartment block. A second block of apartments will be built on the wasteland where the Huigenbos parking garage used to be. The square between the two will be renovated. The consultation (or participation) on this with the residents has now been completed. From the meetings Buurman attended, he got the impression that, despite good intentions, the residents hardly felt heard.

In May, he began following and filming the living environment of the H neighborhood: activities organized by residents in the plaza, the Nigerian restaurant Obalade Suya in the plinth of the Hakfort garage and the Maranatha Community Transformation Centre (MCTC church) are a few examples. The future of all these ventures is uncertain.

In the coming years, he will follow these developments and wants to document how the field of tension between living and system worlds is hopefully slowly but surely shrinking. The works in the exhibition are therefore primarily a Work In Progress.

About the artist:

A recurring subject in the work of Lard Buurman (NL 1969) is the urban public space. This space is not only defined by buildings, architecture and infrastructure, but primarily by the people who find themselves in it.  His interest is primarily in these people, in their use of the city, in the functioning of public space and in (co)living within an urban culture.

Monika Dahlberg

Portable art work from Revolte: One-Tété Lohkay, Queen Nanny, Harriet Tubman, mixed media, 2023

Gatekeeper, mixed media, 2023

During her stay in Zuidoost, Monika Dahlberg worked on works of art that were carried during the SouthEast Parade on August 24 this year. The reason was her participation in Revolte, a project by CBK Zuidoost in which artists were commissioned to create representations of enslaved people who rebelled against their oppressors in former colonial areas. Dahlberg was inspired by women who resisted, namely One-Tété Lohkay (19th century freedom fighter during the end days of slavery on St. Martin), Queen Nanny (ca. 1686 – ca. 1760, an 18th century leader of the Jamaican Maroons) and Harriet Tubman (an American abolitionist, herself an escapee from slavery who helped enslaved people escape via the so-called ‘Underground Railroad’). The works were made together with residents of Zuidoost and carried in the Southeast Parade.

She also created a new sculpture for her Gatekeepers series, an ongoing project in which Dahlberg explores ideas about inclusion and exclusion within the art world.

About the artist:

Monika Dahlberg (Kenya, 1975) makes sculptures, installations, collages, photographs and texts and draws her inspiration from African figure sculptures and popular visual culture. She works a lot with anthropomorphism: attributing human characteristics and emotions to non-human beings. Characteristic of her work are the art historical references that she links to her own biography. In the process, she developed her own visual language that she interweaves with how she lives and experiences life. Her work is expressive, direct and offers a critical view, which can also be uncomfortable and confrontational for viewers.

Jacopo Grilli

Where are we now? (The making of the Multicultural City), ink on paper, books, digital prints, 2023

Jacopo Grilli works on a multi-year research about human sensitivity in the urban space. He operates as an artist in residence and urban designer by combining visual explorations with urban thinking. While being a resident in the Bijlmer (more specific Bullewijk) he observed how diversity is not taken into account when designing new neighborhoods. With his project, Where are we now? he wants to underline the importance of the preservation of cultural groups and values, observe the rise of the individual culture, and consider the importance of culture as leverage for innovation.

The project is divided into three phases/questions the artist asks himself and the audience. “From who I am to who we are?” questions his perception of his own culture by generating a diary of visuals and poetry trying to reach a sequence from personal to universal cultural values. ”Who are you?” is a series of interviews with inhabitants of Bullewijk. Portraits are elaborated by their metaphysical appearance and their quotes enrich their perception of group or individual culture.. “Where are we now?” is not only related to a temporal situation but finally puts in place the emotions and beliefs of the artist and participant of the survey.

The local-oriented project culminates in a series of visions and visualizations for the old and new Bijlmer, with an image manifesto of an architectural typology that encounters the people’s need for cultural manifestation and the city’s need for densification and inevitable gentrification.

About the artist:

Jacopo Grilli (Italy, 1991) is an urbanist and multidisciplinary artist based in Amsterdam.

He operates between fine art and urbanism with the scope to stimulate the collective imagination on urban and social issues. The focus of his work is to reflect on contemporary themes expressed by a unique visual language that aims to enrich the imagination for the future of our cities. By approaching time and space with intuition and disenchantment, he combines philosophy and design to create an emotional narrative for our habitat.

Hassan Issah

During his BijlmAIR period, Hassan Issah, as in his hometown Kumasi, looked at architecture, the built environment and the details in and around houses. Much of his work is inspired by bringing together such elements. This is reflected in the drawings he made and the way he presents his work. He also sought collaboration with various people from the cultural sector in Amsterdam Southeast and inserted elements of their working practices into his works. For example, he used pieces of fabric from a local fashion designer in his new collages and worked with wax-printed fabrics from a friend of his Southeast. Another element that recurs in his work is his working period at the AGA-LAB. There he learned new printing techniques that can be seen in his work and that he will also take back to Ghana to teach workshops in his community himself. (Hassan Issah is still working on his residency at the time of writing this text; he is still developing new work so the text will be adjusted before the start of the exhibition.)

About the artist:

Hassan Issah (Ghana, 1993) is an artist who lives and works in Kumasi. He studied at the Department of Painting & Sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

His work raises questions on power in relation to architecture and modernity, and its effect on our contemporary society. The references in his work, ranges from domestic wall paintings in compound houses within the ‘zongo’ community he grew up in Ghana, to canons that emerged from Africa’s encounter with Islam, the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, colonialism and modernism.

Issah’s interest in the material and object culture in the Zongo communities, especially within Kumasi where he grew up has led him into employing materials such as posters, acrylic/oil paints, henna on canvas, and objects like cast irons/aluminum and steel pipes. These entities are usually welded or constructed together into a constellation of objects and installations that references aesthetics from specific epochs in history (Baroque, Rococo, Abstract Expressionism) that reflect the ordinary.

Giovanni Jona

Suma nay yu?, cement, acryl, grafiek, zand, draad, 2023

Giovanni Jona stayed in the BijlmAIR studio to create new work for CKB Zuidoost’s exhibition Knights in Shining Armor, an exhibition about re-claiming, self-mockery as a shield and art as trauma therapy. He was asked to create new work that could answer the central question in this exhibition: is there room in art for a sense of humor, satire or comedy when it comes to (institutional) racism and oppression?

Jona made two sculptures, the diptych Suma na yu? (Who are you?) in which he shows the subversion that comes with re-claiming and the European hyper-obsession with the Black body. The female figure in the diptych refers to the story of Saartjie Baartman, a South African enslaved woman who became famous as a human attraction because of her behind. The man figure refers to the Surma – the East African people whose tradition among Surma women is to make dilations in the lower lip by placing a plate.

About the artist:

Giovanni Joni (Suriname, 1986) was born in Albina, a small village in northeastern Suriname. After elementary school he began a technical education, but soon ended up working in the gold mines to earn a living. His desire for drawing and painting led him to the Nola Hatterman Art Academy in Paramaribo, where he specialized in portrait painting. His unique style, rooted in the rich maroon culture, is a melange of colors and intricate patterns. Recently, he has also started making sculptures.

Patricia Ribas

Para M (To M), 2023, 11:47 min

A woman’s voice passionately addresses the enigmatic figure “M” in a narrative that initially portrays a positive shift as one colonial ruler replaces another. However, the story ultimately exposes the persistent and oppressive nature of the colonial enterprise within an enduring framework.

The initial “M” refers to Maurits in Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, a seventeenth-century governor sent to Brazil as a representative of the Dutch West Indies Company. Despite the prevailing positive perception of this governmental change and idealized views of Maurits’s presence in Brazil, recent research uncovers the dark legacy of his dictatorship. The letter “M” emerges as a symbol branded on the skin of enslaved Africans under his possession.

Through a creative juxtaposition of images featuring women and reappropriated colonial artifacts in and around Recife, Brazil—an outpost of Dutch occupation—the essay film intricately weaves a poetic letter. It seeks to discern the potential for the subaltern voice to articulate itself. The film powerfully underscores that, while the articulation of truth may demand time, its revelation remains an inevitable prospect.

About the artist:

Patricia Werneck Ribas (Brazil, 1972) is an Amsterdam based artist who works with mainly moving and still images. Her figurative work is often elusive but it is never removed from a particular historical moment. It always belongs to and expands on the complexity of memory, time and location. Questions of ‘identity’ run throughout her work, a word that is always predicated on defining what we are not as a way of thinking through who we are. Her focus is on inviting the viewers to imagine themselves in the place of the other. She disrupts familiar perceptions by investigating how personal narratives connect with wider political and social debates and concerns.

Thanks to: Amarte Fonds, CBK Zuidoost and Mondriaan Fonds

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