Local Heroes

Five artists living and/or working in Amsterdam Zuidoost created new work for this special exhibition. With Local Heroes, CBK Zuidoost stimulates the local art climate in Amsterdam Zuidoost by providing a platform for local makers.

The art field in the Bijlmer is changing. More and more artists are finding their way to this side of the city. With creative hubs such as Heesterveld, Florijn, De Kazerne, Open Ateliers Kraaiennest, and stARTwell, more space has become available for visual artists in Zuidoost over the past decades. The number will continue to grow in the coming years. This is also related to vacant office buildings that are slated for residential development in the near future. Before these buildings are demolished, they remain temporarily vacant, and it is precisely here that new opportunities arise for artists, allowing the cultural ecosystem to continue expanding.

During the exhibition, there will be an Art Café on March 23 featuring an extensive guided tour. This means that the participating artists will each explain their work in their own way. You can register here for this special event—capacity is limited, so act quickly!

Read the news about the opening here.

Bo Bosk

Bo Bosk (1992) is a self-taught figurative painter, born and raised in the Bijlmer. He taught himself to paint by closely observing how his artist friends worked, by discussing techniques extensively with them, and through a great deal of personal experimentation. Since September 2023, he has been studying at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. His love for film is visible in his oeuvre; the scenes in his paintings appear to be painted from film stills.

In his paintings, Bosk uses bold brushstrokes and striking contrasts to express the challenges and triumphs he faced during a turbulent phase of his life. The works illustrate various emotions, attempts at self-reflection, and a search for identity. They reflect his struggles and setbacks—trials that, in hindsight, proved essential in the transition to adulthood. These are intimate self-portraits and portraits of friends that offer a small glimpse into his life story, while allowing the viewer to provide further interpretation.

In the works shown here, Bosk is also experimenting with color and brushwork. For instance, the blue works are a study in working with different shades of blue; how do you mix and use them? In the other works, the investigation of texture plays a major role. For example, in what way can you achieve a granular structure in your work?

Fré Calmes

Fré Calmes (1985, Haiti) (they/them) has been working in a studio in Shebang, Amstel III (Bijlmer-West) since 2023. Calmes was raised polytheistically, with Catholicism and the Voodoo religion. Through Voodoo, the artist can connect with their ancestors and spiritual guides.

Calmes practices their own version of Voodoo or, as they call it, ‘neo-Voodooism’. ‘Neo-Voodooism’ involves performing traditional Voodoo rituals in an artistic form. One of the exercises in this form is offering the body to one of the spiritual guides to convey a message in a visual image. Most of Calmes’ artworks feature the name of one of these spiritual guides. This means that the work is a message from the respective guide to the artist.

Calmes’ works depict a world where history lives on and artistic expression merges. Together with their alter egos or spiritual guides Thenneh Poria and Ekenneh Boyu Boyu, the artist pays tribute to the brave heroes of the Haitian Revolution.

Thenneh Poria utilizes various materials and techniques to create portraits that weave a tapestry of stories, capturing the essence of the men and women who, alongside Toussaint Louverture, fought fervently for the liberation of Haiti.

Ekenneh Boyu Boyu expands the narrative through a mixed-media altar in the shape of a horse. This sculptural piece not only embodies strength and resilience but also serves as a symbolic bridge between worlds. Altagracia (the name of the altar), with its complex combination of materials, becomes a vehicle that transports the spirits of heroes through the fluidity of time and space.

The artist’s goal is not only to display art but also to evoke an emotional response, creating an experience that resonates with the audience on a deep-seated level. Mixed media allows Calmes to break free from conventional constraints, enabling them to tell a more nuanced and multidimensional story of heroism and resilience. The materials used (such as Pokémon cards and textile dolls) can spark a conversation between parents and children about heroes.

Heroes of the Haitian Revolution

Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière
Lamartinière is one of the few Haitian women who served in the army during the Haitian Revolution. Dressed in a male uniform, she fought alongside her husband, demonstrating her skill with both rifle and sword during the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot. When she was not fighting from the ramparts with admirable courage, she spent her time tending to the wounded soldiers around her. She was known for her ability to make quick decisions in difficult situations, a trait that made her a valuable comrade in battle.

Lamartinière’s husband was reportedly killed in the same year as the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot. After the revolution, this heroic female soldier was largely forgotten, although it is rumored that she remarried a fellow combatant.

Suzanne Béliar
Another female soldier during the Haitian Revolution was Suzanne Béliar. After marrying a general, she became a sergeant and subsequently a lieutenant. Although she fought bravely throughout the revolution, she was taken prisoner of war during an attack on Corail-Mirrault. She and her husband surrendered simultaneously to avoid being separated, and both were sentenced to death. The courage she displayed at her execution is celebrated throughout Haitian history.

Cécile Fatiman
Cécile Fatiman also lived during the Haitian Revolution, but her contribution was very different from that of the two women mentioned above. Instead of being a soldier, she participated in religious ceremonies as a Voodoo priestess. During one of her ceremonies, she and other practitioners prophesied the revolution. Some historians believe this actually sparked the revolution, giving the rebels the extra momentum they needed to proceed with their actions. Within just a few days of Fatiman’s prophecy, the rebels had destroyed nearly two thousand plantations, and before they knew it, they had a revolution on their hands.

Marie Sainte Dédée Bazile
According to legend, Bazile was an enslaved person during the Haitian Revolution. She gained fame for her heroic deeds following the assassination of Emperor Dessalines. Marie Sainte Dédée Bazile is now considered a symbolic heroine of Haitian independence. She took Dessalines’ body after his execution and transported it for a proper burial. She died shortly after the revolution, and although her grave has been lost, her lineage and story live on through her four children.

Paul Louverture
Paul Louverture, the older brother of Toussaint Louverture, played a supporting role in the early stages of the Haitian Revolution and contributed to the resistance against French colonial rule.

Moïse Hyacinthe
Moïse Hyacinthe, the nephew of Toussaint Louverture, served as a military officer in the revolutionary army and fought alongside his uncle and other leaders for Haiti’s independence.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a prominent military leader, played a crucial role in the later stages of the Haitian Revolution. He declared Haiti’s independence on January 1, 1804, and became its first ruler.

Henri Christophe
Henri Christophe, a military leader, later served as president and then as King Henry I in independent Haiti. He emphasized nation-building efforts and made a lasting impact on Haitian history.

Altagracia
Altagracia, with its complex combination of materials, becomes a vehicle that transports the spirits of heroes through the fluidity of time and space. She embodies strength and resilience, but also serves as a symbolic bridge between worlds. The dolls she carries represent children and their parents, as these heroes also fought for their future.

Ivna Esajas

“Imagination
creates the situation
and, then the situation
creates imagination”

(Quote from the poem ‘Imagination’ by James Baldwin from: Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems)

Ivna Esajas has her studio in the Bijlmer, at Stichting Open Ateliers (Kruitberg). She graduated in June 2023 from the Blacker Blackness master’s program at the Sandberg Instituut. Esajas creates drawings on canvas that emerge intuitively. Lines on the canvas explore form and intermediate form. The works make connections between the present, the past, personal stories, and memories. Stories and memories that wander through the universe, lines through time. In her new works, Esajas experiments with methods and alternative forms of presentation.

I am a painter,
or rather, I make drawings on canvas.
With charcoal, pencil, paint, and ink.
When I start a new work, I have no plan.
I travel across the canvas with charcoal.

Creating lines, exploring forms that can lead to stories,
without a fixed destination.
Trying to capture what takes place within the lines and the space in between.

My drawings are.
They are open to connection.

It is for those who want to take the time,
To look beyond the aesthetics.
They are stories in themselves,
That do not have to answer to anyone.

Not even to me.

Read an article about the work of Ivna Esajas in metropolism here

Sonia Kazovsky

Sonia Kazovsky (1989, RU/IL/NL) is an artist/researcher currently based in Amsterdam Zuidoost. Her investigative art practice consists of various discursive works, including published plays, essays, and performative installations. The idea of the ‘archive’ is central to her practice; she examines different mechanisms of storytelling, investigating how stories evolve and transform across different times and spaces, along with their changing political implications. Additionally, she works as a lecturer, undertakes curatorial assignments, and writes for and within institutions, including the Rietveld Academie, the Sandberg Instituut, and the Dutch Art Institute.

The Lowell Re:Offering – Conjuring the Ghosts of Lowell examines an archive of writings previously published in ‘The Lowell Offering’, a magazine published between 1840 and 1845 by female factory workers in Lowell, Massachusetts. This Re:Offering conjures the ghosts of these women through their own writings and is a critical investigation into the roots of white feminism, labor history, and abolitionist perspectives. In doing so, the inherent paradoxes of conceptions of freedom are unraveled. The Lowell Re:Offering – Conjuring the Ghosts of Lowell is a poetic script, an apocalyptic newspaper, and rearranged historical narratives that present a mundane and cyclical catastrophe of social reproduction—in which contemporary moments resonate.

Delano Mac Andrew

Delano Mac Andrew (1962, Suriname) works from his studio at Stichting Open Ateliers (Bijlmer, Kruitberg). His artworks are both two- and three-dimensional and are often executed in an abstract figurative style. Themes in his visual objects are frequently translations of a socio-cultural context. Mac Andrew lived in Suriname until the age of 24^{, which means his work is partly rooted in this place with its colonial and religious history and its aftermath. Officially, he grew up in the ‘third world’, the term coined for developing countries. All of this shaped him and marked his experiences. This perspective makes his work activist, woke… or perhaps deeply personal?}

In recent years, he has often used embroidery techniques in his two-dimensional work. He does this in an unconventional way: using iron, copper, and nylon thread on a substrate of transparent plastic, garbage bags, corrugated iron, wood, and other materials. The artisanal aspect of this painstaking work is just as important as the visualization of the subject.

Den wan di e tyari mi – The ones who carry me is an ode to his female ancestors on whose shoulders he stands. All have already passed away, thus beings from another dimension, yet present in the here and now. In the matriarchal Suriname in which he grew up, ‘grandma’ was an indispensable figure: loving, a source of life wisdom, sometimes quite quarrelsome, but above all an unyielding force and an example.

The series consists of three abstracted portraits of his female ancestors: great-grandmother Henriette, grandmother Anna, and his grandmother Hilda. All were once photographed wearing an angisa (a Surinamese headscarf folded from a piece of cloth stiffened with starch) on their heads; one wore this headgear daily, the other mainly on festive occasions. The exhibited angisa, model Otobaka, therefore completes this tribute to them—his female ancestors.

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