Category Archives: Afri-/Afrodiasporic communities in the Netherlands
love – Charl Landvreugd on language and belonging
I adore, admire and will forever champion Charl Landvreugd’s loving efforts to theorize and contribute to the visual language of Afro-Dutch artists. Dutch Afro Becomings: Hybrid Being in Black Art and Culture is a publication to sit with, to closely read. And reread. It’s an art-historical love note about and towards future understandings and redefinings that no longer feel borrowed but are unmistakably ours.
Love.
Event: #BPTUnpacks – Black sculptures and statues in public spaces, September 7.
“I’m in need of our visibility to not depend on our physical presence. And, I long for a visibility that’s centered around a recognition that actually brings us joy. Or at least a soothing, a relief that doesn’t require or remind us of a wrecking.” – Simone Zeefuik in Operatic Stillness, the first part of her twofold piece about Thomas J Price’s sculpture Moments Contained.
Paris, London, Rotterdam and Amsterdam all have rather significant numbers of Black residents. But, what would be left of this Black presence if none of the Black folks are physically outside? For our September 7-edition of #BPTUnpacks we’ll focus on sculptures and statues that represent Black people ánd are made by Black artists. Through their presentations and a panel conversation, five speakers will discuss some of their favourite works and imagine what they’d like to see.
Date and time: Thursday September 7, 19.30h.
Location: Bijlmer Parktheater (address: Anton de Komplein 240, 1102 DR Amsterdam).
Tickets: Please use this link to buy your tickets in advance. Tickets: 13 euro in total.
Line up
We’ll start our program with UK based digital sculptor, writer, researcher and curator Rayvenn D’Clark (London) who’ll talk about the craft of sculpting and her current practice. Aruna Vermeulen (Rotterdam), Simone Lagrand (Paris), Sarah Ozo-Irabor (Books&Rhymes, London) and Simone Zeefuik (Bijlmer) will discuss the importance of sculptures and statues depicting both everydayness and legacies in their respective cities. Lashaaawn (Amsterdam) and Ernestine Comvalius (Bijlmer) will imagine the kind of sculptures and/or statues they’d like to see. After their individual presentations, they’ll join each other in a conversation about craft and Blackity Black (re)imaginations.
The need for Afro-Dutch reviewers: PaarsPaars and upcoming event
On Friday November 11 Romana Vrede, Ira Kip and I launched PaarsPaars (PurplePurple), the space where Blackity Black thinkers reflect, share and cultivate conversations about Black art in the Netherlands. We started with an open letter to our kinfolk: A note about the need for Black reviewers. During the #BPTUnpacks event at Bijlmer Parktheater on Friday December 2, we’ll gather to discusssss. We’ll unpack a variety of Dutch theatre reviews and (re)imagine the kind of conversations the work of Afro-Dutch theatre makers, choreographers and playwrights truly deserves. Please note: The presentations and conversations during this event will be in Dutch.
#BPTUnpacks event info
Date and location: Friday December 2, Bijlmer Parktheater (Amsterdam).
Time: Doors open at 19.10h, we start at 19.30h sharp-sharp.
Presentations by: Ernestine Comvalius, Emilie van Heydoorn, Ira Kip, Richard Kofi and yours truly.
For our panel we’ll be joined by: José Montoya.
Tickets: Click this link to buy tickets for #BPTUnpacks on Friday December 2 .
Excerpts from our note:
‘From Eurocentric expectations and a less than minimal knowledge of Black arts to the use of terms like “gorilla” to describe Black performers… In its current form, the world of Dutch reviews has nothing to offer creators like us. It’s horrendous to witness how, time and time again, various art editors try to suffocate this work that is so important to us by squeezing it into the narrowest forms of whiteness. Horrendous and beyond boring. (…) We need reviews and reflections that inspire Afro-Dutch makers to further strengthen, deepen and broaden their artistic signatures. We long for art criticism and other forms of reflections that don’t just fit our imagination, involvement and expertise, but that also emerge from them. (…) Our imagination, our joy, our rest, our worries, our commitment, our knowledge, our curiosity, our history, our now, our future, our spectacles and our everydayness deserve more in depth conversations. Our future makers deserve an archive in which they see us and themselves reflected in pieces that are written by us. We can’t trust anybody else with this responsibility. To remix Toni Morrison: “We are our own best thing.”’
Instah fam, be sure to follow @paarsispaars for all your updates. The note will soon be translated in English. Click here for the full version (in Dutch).
laZeefuik 
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