Kunstinstituut Melly Archive

Item sets

• Adriano Amaral, new work
  While the internet, prosthetics, solar panels, and touch screens can each be seen as ways of ‘upgrading’ human experience, a more elemental and subjective tendency seems to be gaining value again. Intuition, emotion, and imagination have become central tenets and, akin to the movement of Romanticism that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, Enlightenment’s emphasis on a purely rational outlook is being called into question. Adriano Amaral investigates the place of materiality by creating environments in which natural and synthetic elements merge, forming hybrids between technology and mysticism. With an intuitive approach towards materials, combining industrial and discarded personal objects, Amaral creates site-sensitive installations that model the exhibition space as an encompassing experience. In his response to existing architectural qualities, Amaral both subverts and transforms them. Although discussions about the relationship between the human and the artificial have intensified in the last couple of years, this relationship is nothing new. Humans are, and always have been, reshaped by the objects and technologies they create. In his work, Amaral accentuates this relationship by combining found materials, trying to find “the most natural way to extend objects synthetically.” By doing so, he investigates and tests the social and environmental implications of materials and their interactions, suggesting a flow of energy and movement between them. The exhibition is curated by guest curator Julia Mullié and is a collaboration with Pivô in São Paulo, where the exhibition will open 30 May 2020. Participants Adriano Amaral Curators Julia Mullié Network Pivô Supported By AMMODO, Embassy of Brazil in The Hague, Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo, Brazil, the artist’s fee is supported by the Mondriaan Fund (from the Experimental Regulations), technology is provided in partnership with Beam Systems <div class="
• Alia Farid, a solo exhibition
  Alia Farid’s work explores contemporary urban life against the backdrop of colonial histories in Kuwait and Puerto Rico, where the artist lives and works. Farid has especially explored the correlations between the shaping of environment and perception. Her work has dealt with social displacement and migration, national identity and self-representation, as well as the enduring legacy and impact of Western imperialism. Farid interprets her research-based artistic practice through drawings, installations, public interventions, and, most recently, film. Farid’s most recent artistic research centers on communities who, in one way or another, actively resist the assimilation of modern culture. This she draws out and articulates through various micro-narratives and actions enmeshed in daily life. Her subjects are located in the Global South, a descriptor the artist purposefully employs to both locate and complicate the degrees of separation between the Caribbean and the Middle East—the two regions where Farid grew-up, and which inspire much of her work. Her exhibition at Witte de With presents a newly commissioned film installation, along with her earlier film At the Time of the Ebb, 2019. Her new work is shot in Haiti, and centers on the after-effects of the country’s historic revolution. Her earlier film was also shot on an island, in Qeshm, Iran; it is a melancholic meandering through the local rituals of Nowruz Sayadeen (Fisherman’s New Year). In both films, Farid delves into how group rituals, social ruptures, and individual acts of resistance may admit, escape, alter or reject definition. The artist’s new work is commissioned by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in partnership with The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada, and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, United States. This is the artist’s first exhibition in the Netherlands. Participants Alia Farid Curators Rosa de Graaf Network Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery Supported By AMMODO, the artist’s fee is supported by the Mondriaan Fund (from the Experimental Regulations), technology is provided in partnership with Beam Systems <div class="
• An exhibition with works by Athos Bulcão, Marcos Castro, Anna Franceschini, Ni Haifeng, Nicolás Lamas, Praneet Soi, Adriana Varejão, Ana Vaz, Bouke de Vries, Raed Yassin, Karlos Gil & Belén Zahera
  This exhibition explores the immigration of form. It regards a cultural product that is as much the result of local traditions as it is a cosmopolitan artifact. Here, consider Delft Blue in the Netherlands. Now, consider a piece of Qinghua Porcelain in China, or Iznik Ceramic in Turkey, Azulejo in Portugal, China in Britain, or Talavera in Spain and Talavera Poblana in Mexico. These are all blue-and-white ceramics that can be traced back to global trade. This type of artifact signals a commercial approach—by and large through colonialism—that massively transformed civilizations. By focusing on an aesthetic manifestation of a world in movement, this exhibition invites you to consider a blue-and-white ceramic piece as both a vessel and a port. It gathers artworks in different media made by contemporary artists from the Americas, Asia, and Europe. In the Netherlands, the rise in popularity of blue and white ceramics came by way of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early seventeenth century. The esteem and value of these ceramics was not only because their provenance and designs were considered exotic. Their material composition was foreign, too. These imported pieces were made in porcelain, of which invention and related enterprise was protectively overseen by the Chinese Dynasty. In the fourteenth century, when porcelain was considered “white gold,” The Ottoman Empire was already commissioning custom-made Chinese porcelain for export. They are also credited for having provided the Chinese with cobalt, the blue color-producing mineral, which they sourced from the region known today as Iraq. But it was long-distance maritime trade that globally internationalized the style of blue and white ceramics. Participants Athos Bulcão, Marcos Castro, Anna Franceschini, Ni Haifeng, Nicolás Lamas, Praneet Soi, Adriana Varejão, Ana Vaz, Bouke de Vries, Raed Yassin, Karlos Gil, Belén Zahera Curators Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Bernardo José de Souza Supported By Fonds 21, Stichting Van Achterbergh - Domhof and made possible by the Athos Bulcão Foundation. Ana Vaz, Bernardo José de Souza, Karlos Gil & Belén Zahera's travel and stay is supported by the Embassy of Brazil, The Hague, and the Embassy of Spain, the Hague. The artists' fees are supported by the Mondriaan Fund (from the Experimental Regulations). The production of the work of Anna Franceschini is in part made possible by a contribution of PERUFFO Jewelry. <div class="
• A presentation with works by Jarmal Martis, Nelly Dos Reis, Enang Wattimena, and Tina Rahimy
  For this presentation, we expand our MELLY’S Neighbours program with art commissions and displays that further connect our institution with our neighbouring communities. Here, we reflect upon Rotterdam’s transformation over the past three decades, as well as the changing relationships between these communities and our institution. Late last year, we invited two visual artists and two narrators to work in pairs or individually and join us in reflection, capturing and questioning the developments in our neighborhood. They are photographer Jarmal Martis together with storyteller Nelly Dos Reis, as well as filmmaker Enang Wattimena and political philosopher Tina Rahimy. Their research and conversations began at the start of 2020, and were guided by these kinds of questions: Who are our neighbors? Which neighbors have witnessed the development of this art institution? What is the relationship between us and them, if any? What will our institution look like in the future, considering our ongoing transformation that goes in par with our renaming process? And, how do our neighbors imagine the future of this street? Over time, each of the projects and conversations in development took a turn. This first happened in the Spring, due to the pandemic lockdown; then, during the summer, in light of the Black Lives Matter movement in Rotterdam and internationally. Consequently, the direction of each commissioned project changed. While the key intentions remained the same, different routes were taken as a means to process a drastically altered set of circumstances. Presented in these vitrines, are the research results of Martis, Dos Reis, Wattimena, and Rahimy manifest through photography, video interviews, textile, and text. This project is curated by Jessy Koeiman and is part of Anchored, a project series that explores our immediate environment in Rotterdam, including our building, our street, and our neighbors. It is part of our ongoing name change initiative. Experience other Anchored projects in the series on our 1st and 2nd floors. The wall and floor graphics in MELLY are social distancing indicators; it is commissioned to Enchilada (Rotterdam). The furniture is designed by Manuel Raeder (Berlin). Participants Nelly Dos Reis, Jarmal Martis, Tina Rahimy, Enang Wattimena Curators Jessy Koeiman <div class="
• Christian Vinck, new work
  Christian Vinck regards himself as an artist belonging to a long tradition of amateur painters. That is to say, what matters most to him is not his technique so much as his subjects. Likening his artistic process to the act of fishing, painting affords him invaluable space in which to process his vast and eclectic collection of references. His collections range from sticker books, album covers, and baseball cards, to newspaper cuttings, historical encyclopedias, and found photography. Drawing on such source materials and collecting habits, the bodies of work he comes to create unfold gradually through a daily ritual of painting. This is where personal narratives come to be interwoven with minor histories, micro-narratives, and fictional stories inspired by actual events, people, and non-human species. For this exhibition, Vinck’s personal experience of migration—he was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and currently lives and works in Madrid, Spain—inspires a central theme: flight. The exhibition features more than 200 new paintings of oil on canvas. Together, they are ‘Album #8, Alt’, grouped into four series. In one, he maps and illustrates an unofficial history of aviation in Latin America. In another, he creates a series of clouds based on used sticker sheets. A further series sees him imitate two breeds of dog figured in a pair of ceramic tiles he found in Italy. Finally, he portrays Turpiales, the national bird of Venezuela and Curaçao, and Pinzones taking cue from his surname, which, in Dutch, means “finch.” (Vinck is both Dutch and Venezuelan.) While creating these works, the artist began to address more profoundly the intersection of the Dutch and Spanish heritages that culturally inform the part of the Caribbean where he grew up. His fascination in picturing images is not only provoked by dominant histories and official archives, but is inspired, by and large, by oral histories and urban legends. His exhibition gives attention to the at first meaningless miscellanea that people surround themselves with; once gathered, this patchwork of visual fragments introduce more informal ways of creating legacies, and in representing cultural identity. This is the artist’s first exhibition in the Netherlands. Participants Christian Vinck Curators Rosa de Graaf, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy Supported By AMMODO, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), the artist’s fee is supported by the Mondriaan Fund (from the Experimental Regulations) <div class="
• Kapwani Kiwanga, new work
  The artist Kapwani Kiwanga has been in dialogue with curator and theorist iLiana Fokianaki, who was invited to organize this exhibition. They ask, “What is the role of plants in the histories of human struggle for liberation?” Here, the curator has written an introduction to the exhibition, as well as artwork labels. This exhibition presents a new body of work by Kapwani Kiwanga, who lives and works in Paris. The work revolves around the epistemologies of botany, its histories and their relation to acts of resistance. The artist examines the role of plants in self-medication, subsistence, and self-protection, while considering plants as witnesses to human history. Kiwanga looks at how plants can metamorphose from pharmakon (medicine) to poison. For her, the tenuous balance between the two further highlights one other important concept: opacity, or, the visibility and invisibility of resistance. From seeds hidden in the hair of abducted people to flowers used as abortifacients, the relationship between botany and human defiance is key in this exhibition. Scholars and theorists looking into the histories of racial inequality have proposed opacity as an expression of resistance. The Martinique-French theorist Édouard Glissant discusses opacity as the denial to be visible or to be understood and categorized. This line of thought was furthered by Afro-American writer Saidiya Hartman, who identifies opacity as obscurity and calls for “the right of obscurity to be respected.” Opacity/obscurity stands in stark contradiction to the hyper-visibility of the controlled body imposed by dominant narratives. It also runs against appropriating practices of exposure, demonstrated in the science of botany developed in the West from the 16th century onwards. Kiwanga’s desire to unveil plants as protagonists of the “opacity of resistance,” links the histories of resistance from previous centuries to the modern histories of civil rights movements and the current anti-racist global movement. This Spring, Kiwanga and Fokianaki discussed creating an additional new work in response to current events. Their dialogue centered in bridging past and present acts of resistance, as well as bringing attention to racial violence and inequalities in the West and beyond. This new work draws inspiration from the seminal civil rights song, Mississippi Goddam (1964), written and performed by Nina Simone. Participants Kapwani Kiwanga Curators iLiana Fokianaki Supported By AMMODO, Institut Francais des Pays-Bas, the Canada Council for the Arts, the artist’s fee is supported by the Mondriaan Fund (from the Experimental Regulations) <div class="
• Michael Stevenson, a solo exhibition
  For over three decades, the New Zealand-born artist Michael Stevenson, who lives and works in Berlin, has developed a practice that is at once research based and materially dedicated. His artworks operate at the confluence of economics, technology, belief, and the infrastructural systems that enable them. Known primarily for his large-scale art installations and ambitious sculptures, he has done so through numerous collaborations with scholars and engineers, as well as with individuals whose oral histories have yet to be widely communicated. Stevenson’s practice may draw conceptual threads connecting the Middle East to Central America, or an experimental learning environment in California with a community practice in Nuremberg or Geneva, where the artist works as an art professor. Creating artworks that have, over the years, dealt with a distinct range of infrastructural or macro-systems––from economic theories and pedagogical models to belief systems and the figures of higher beings––Stevenson’s artistic perspective suggests a geography that is unbounded. Yet at the same time, central to each project is an ethnographic bent for the micro-narratives and worlds that are decidedly discontinuous. The voices of the characters which he implicates or figures in his works are adherents, but are also skeptical and vulnerable both to ideas and to the consequences of proof versus belief. This exhibition presents a first for Stevenson, comprising a selection of works drawn from key projects developed over the past decade, as well as new work. In the absence of their original assemblies of past art installations, the artist regards their parts and re-assemblage as if emerging from a “boneyard” of sorts. Akin to an aviation boneyard, this alludes to a storage area for furloughed parts and materials that may come to be reused and repurposed over time. A fitting analogy, considering it is sites of this particular kind that have long-inspired Stevenson’s work. For this exhibition, each of the artworks have come to be thought anew along new lines of inquiry. Together, they manifest rationalized ideas as much as emotional binds that people have with education, theology, and technology. This exhibition is co-presented by KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, where a larger iteration of the exhibition will be staged in 2021. This is the artist’s first exhibition in the Netherlands. Participants Michael Stevenson Curators Rosa de Graaf, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy Network KW Institute for Contemporary Art Supported By AMMODO, Henry Moore Foundation, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, the artist’s fee is supported by the Mondriaan Fund (from the Experimental Regulations) <div class="
• Michiel Huijben, new work
  Last year, we commissioned visual artist Michiel Huijben to conduct research into our building's design. Based in Rotterdam, Huijben’s artistic practice involves historical and archival research, as well as publishing, writing, and sketching alternative histories of architecture through live performance, installation, and video. For its part, our building was designed by municipal architect C.B. van der Tak. It was constructed in the 1870s as a female-only civic school. Here, a live performance and this exhibition by Huijben place the institution’s architecture at the center of their investigation. With the late nineteenth century debate around an ‘official’ national style as a backdrop, this new work searches for traces of human decision-making across the histories of the school’s use, the building, and the wider city environment. This juncture is explored in two acts: Act One departs from the specificities of the building’s exterior. Beginning with ornamental sculptures 3D-scanned from the institution’s façade, the story builds to pan outward into the surrounding city via other examples of nineteenth century architecture in Rotterdam. These ornaments could be considered characters, sculptures, or simply extras in the debate around a national architectural style. These pieces are handled by Huijben at different moments in a live performance; here, a video presents the artist’s rehearsal. Act Two is formulated around a speculative interior floor plan depicting the original uses of the building. Here, through archival photographs and reinterpretations of spatial configurations and architectural plans, the story elaborates on the airy spaces, natural light, and occupancy standards of educational architecture at the turn of the twentieth century. The artist’s live performance takes the form of a lecture; a video of which will be presented here thereafter. Huijben’s presentation also involves an architectural intervention that turns this room into an exhibition space; it was formerly used as an office. The performance schedule is listed in our website; these will take place considering social distancing measures. This presentation is part of Anchored, a project series that explores this institution’s immediate environment, including its building, street, and neighbors. Experience other Anchored projects at MELLY and as part of Rotterdam Cultural Histories on the first floor. Participants Michiel Huijben Curators Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy Supported By Stichting Elise Mathilde Fonds, the artist’s fee is supported by the Mondriaan Fund (from the Experimental Regulations) <div class="
• Rotterdam Cultural Histories #18: The 1980s art scene on the Witte de Withstraat
  This edition of Rotterdam Cultural Histories focuses on the art scene of the Witte de Withstraat in the 1980s. A documentary exhibition, it presents images and materials of the art initiative Het Veem, as well as three art galleries: Galerie Snoei, Galerie van Mourik, and Tudelu Galerie. Their spaces were all sited on the Witte de Withstraat during that decade. Also presented are photographs commissioned to Jannes Linders. These picture the current use of the original location of these art spaces. The aim of this exhibition is to examine the role these art spaces played in shaping the artistic climate of our street, and to acknowledge the ways in which they lay the ground for the founding of our institution here. At the time, many new institutions were founded and sited in the vicinity. These include: CBK Rotterdam (1982); Maritime Museum (1986); Dutch Architecture Institute – NAi (1988), which eventually merged into The New Institute (2013); our institution, formerly known as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (1990); Kunsthal (1992); V2_Lab for the Unstable Media (1994); WORM (1994); Nederlands Fotoarchief (1990) and Nederlands Fotoinstituut (1994), which eventually merged into Nederlands Fotomuseum (2003); M.a.M.A. (1997); and, TENT Rotterdam (1999). Together, these institutions have greatly contributed to Rotterdam’s artistic climate. This exhibition is one of several upcoming projects exploring histories in and of this street from 1871 onwards. That was the year it was named Witte de Withstraat. Since then, the street has been home to editorial offices and various newspapers; it was also an allegedly shady-night-life destination; it has been considered Rotterdam’s art quarter; more recently, it has become a central destination for cultural tourism, and is populated with hotels, restaurants, bars, and cafés. Since 2013, the organization Kunstblock (‘Art block’), promotes institutional collaboration and cross-promotion between neighboring institutions here: CBK, MAMA, TENT, V2, WORM, and our institution. This exhibition is curated by Wendy van Slagmaat-Bos. It is part of Rotterdam Cultural Histories, a collaborative project between our institution and TENT Rotterdam, both housed in this building. Begun in 2014, this long-term research project focuses on studying these institution's common roots in Rotterdam. This presentation is also part of Anchored, a project series that explores this institution’s immediate environment, including its building, street, and neighbors. Experience other Anchored projects at MELLY and on our 2nd floor. Curators Wendy van Slagmaat-Bos Series Rotterdam Cultural Histories <div class="
• Usha Seejarim, a solo exhibition
  For over a decade the artist Usha Seejarim has been in dialogue with the curator and writer Tumelo Mosaka, who was invited to organize this exhibition. Here, the curator has written an introduction, as well as gallery texts throughout the exhibition. Usha Seejarim draws inspiration from the Latin term Vesica Piscis, which translated means, “vessel of fish”. It refers to the almond-shaped fish bladder, while also illustrated by the joining of two perfect circles to create a third lens in the center. This lens mirrors the profile of a fish, which is commonly associated with the Christian emblem. Historically, this image extends beyond Christianity to include ancient cultures such as the Greek and Syrian. An example is the word “fish” and “womb,” which exist interchangeably in these cultures. The meaning relies on various associations to reveal either concrete or metaphorical understanding. Seejarim is invested in multiple definitions of objects where symbolic meaning is not limited, but instead relies on the changing context. Most of her work focuses on the critique of gender and identity politics affecting women. In the exhibition, the fish image stands as a sign of womanhood. It is evoked to address the historical bias of inequality and oppression that has contributed sexist ideologies against women. This symbol can also be understood as a bridge between ideas and identities where intersection allows for fluidity and transformation. For Seejarim, the female body is a register for confronting women’s lived experiences. While the representation of the physical body itself is absent, it is signified through anatomical fragmentation such as in the shape of a vagina and earlobe. Moreover, the material choice of household objects such as cloth pegs and wooden brooms also connects the body to socially constructed gender roles. As a mother, wife, and artist, Seejarim brings into attention the unequal distribution of labor attributed to women as useful and controllable subjects. While the issue of female subjectivity is prevalent throughout her work, Seejarim explores the complex tensions surrounding everyday household rituals done by women and their desire and dilemma to escape such roles. The phenomenon of “escape” and “return” in everyday rituals is true to the artist’s life as a homemaker and creative producer. Seejarim negotiates between and against these polarizing positions by recasting ordinary materials into new forms that challenge the benefits of our patriarchal society. This is the artist’s first exhibition in the Netherlands. The exhibition is coordinated by Wendy van Slagmaat-Bos. Participants Usha Seejarim Curators Tumelo Mosaka Supported By AMMODO, the artist’s fee is supported by the Mondriaan Fund (from the Experimental Regulations), the Robben Foundation <div class="
• 84 STEPS
  Inaugurated in 2021, 84 STEPS features projects conceived at the intersection of art and education. This page includes a general introduction to this long-term and evolving initiative; additional pages linked here provide information on each participating artist and commission; links to related public programs can be found here, too. 84 STEPS occupies an entire floor of Kunstinstituut Melly. It features a constellation of specially commissioned artworks and environments. The installations are regularly activated in different ways by the participating artists, as well as our institution's programming team and guest participants. The work and events within 84 STEPS give special attention to the relation between physical and mental architectures, as much as with interpretations of personal and social health. These relations have been actively explored through programs organized in seasonal thematic clusters. The name 84 STEPS alludes to the number of steps that connect the building's ground floor to this third-floor gallery. This transformation of a white-cube gallery into a dynamic space for socializing art follows our 2018 makeover of the ground floor gallery, MELLY. This approach to exhibition-making emphasizes an ongoing interest in developing new forms of public engagement with art, and no less of articulating embodied knowledge and shared experiences with art. To date, 84 STEPS has included works by Afra Eisma, The Feminist Health Care Research Group (Inga Zimprich), Alma Heikkilä, Maike Hemmers, Moosje M Goosen and Daily Practice (Suzanne Weenink), Domenico Mangano & Marieke van Rooy, Raja’a Khalid, Lisa Tan, Tromarama, RA Walden and Anna Witt. In June 2023, the art installation by Lisa Tan is exchanged with a culminating chapter of 84 STEPS: a documentary display surveying the numerous artistic installations, environments, and activity-based programs that have come to constitute this exhibition initiative over the past three years. The artists in 84 STEPS have been commissioned by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy and Rosa de Graaf, with Wendy van Slagmaat Bos and Julija Mockutė. The programs within 84 STEPS include Trainings organized by Aqueene Wilson and Veronika Babayan, as well as Forums, Workshops, and myriad events organized by Vivian Ziherl and Jessy Koeiman. These activities have involved a range of participants, from health experts and art historians to movement and wellness practitioners to healers and activists. Participants Afra Eisma, The Feminist Health Care Research Group (Inga Zimprich), Moosje M Goosen, Alma Heikkilä, Maike Hemmers, Raja’a Khalid, Domenico Mangano & Marieke van Rooy, Daily Practice (Suzanne Weenink), Lisa Tan, Tromarama, RA Walden, Anna Witt Curators Veronika Babayan, Rosa de Graaf, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Jessy Koeiman, Julija Mockute, Aqueene Wilson, Vivian Ziherl Series 84 STEPS, TRAININGS Supported By 2021: OUTSET, Goethe Institut Rotterdam 2022: Frame Finland, ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), Goethe Institut Rotterdam, Stokroos Foundation, and IASPIS <div class="
• Rotterdam Cultural Histories # 19: Homes for People, Not Profit
  How do we want to live? What kind of place do we need to live and work? What are alternatives to the dominant forms of ownership and the market-driven housing policy at a time when space is becoming increasingly scarce and expensive, and citizens are being pushed out of their homes? What role can art play in this? FGA invites you to look back and ahead. Rotterdam-based artist collective Fucking Good Art, together with several partners, is investigating the possibilities of cooperative and self-organized forms of housing in Rotterdam. In the Shared Space of TENT and Kunstinstituut Melly, FGA presents an installation and key documents: plans, visions, the Housing Acts from 1901 and 2015, activism, and Jaap Bakema’s fantastic manifesto from 1971, with 64 points for "a wide range of spatial quality" and “joyful-dwelling associations”. This presentation is part of ongoing field research by FGA in the city, which you can follow on their blog and through public space interventions. FGA broadcasts talks and reports on Radio WORM every Friday from 17.00 to 18:00. FGA and TENT are currently exploring possibilities to facilitate conversations for interested parties through city walks and an online mini-symposium. Participants Fucking Good Art Series Rotterdam Cultural Histories <div class="
• Sasha Huber, a solo exhibition
  Swiss-Haitian-Finnish artist Sasha Huber uses performance, photography and film, among other media, to investigate colonial residues left in the environment. Her projects conceive of natural spaces—mountains, lakes, rock formations, glaciers, forests, and craters—as contested territories, highlighting the ways in which history is imprinted onto the landscape through acts of remembrance. Her artistic research especially draws her to investigate acts of memorialization through naming and the erection of monuments. Marking the artist’s first solo in the Netherlands, this exhibition presents over a decade’s worth of work prompted by the cultural and political activist campaign Demounting Louis Agassiz. Founded in 2007 by Swiss historian Hans Fässler, the campaign seeks to make public the racist legacy of Swiss-born naturalist and glaciologist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873). His scientific contributions to the fields of glaciology, paleontology, and geology resulted in over 80 landmarks (and seven animals) bearing his name on Earth, Moon, and Mars. Less well known, however, is Agassiz’s legacy of ‘scientific’ racism, an ideology that includes miscegenation, or the suppression of interracial marriage, cohabitation and procreation, and the creation of racial hierarchies. As a member of the Demounting Committee, Huber has staged numerous interventions at terrestrial and extraterrestrial sites bearing Agassiz’s name. The artist draws from both archival research and the embodied experience of moving through a world marked by the names of racist thinkers and policymakers, and in doing so seeks to make public the racist legacy of Louis Agassiz. On a practical level, this has entailed the artist’s involvement in local politics, lobbying, and petitioning for the renaming of these sites. On an aesthetic level, Huber explores art’s potential for engendering such sites’ symbolic rededication, affectively writing into being counter histories through movement, sound, and touch. This exhibition is co-produced in collaboration with The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada. Participants Sasha Huber Curators Rosa de Graaf, Justine Kohleal Network The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery Series SOLO DUETS Supported By AMMODO, Frame Finland, and Alfred Kordelin Foundation <div class="
• Simon Fujiwara, new work
  Update 1 May 2022: Kunstinstituut Melly is pleased to offer on sale a new limited edition by Simon Fujiwara. Proceeds generated from the sale of these works partly go to the artist; partly towards future exhibitions at Kunstinstituut Melly. For his first solo exhibition in the Netherlands, artist Simon Fujiwara presents a large body of works on paper centered around his creation of an original cartoon character, Who the Bær. Fujiwara began drawing and collaging versions of his bear during the first 2020 lockdown in Berlin, developing the concept of a contemporary subject that exists as a ‘total image searching for a self in the world of images’. Who the Bær since developed into a large-scale project manifesting in drawings, collages, sculptures, animations and animatronics. Taking a cartoon subject as a simplified lens to look at image culture, Fujiwara’s absurdist creations reflect on the complex mechanisms of defining a self in an image-dominated world. For this exhibition, the artist returns to the origins of his project presenting a personal archive of over 100 drawings and ‘thinking works.’ Together, they show the various ways the artist uses Who as a cartoon avatar through which to explore the pleasures and traumas, violence and joys of life in the mediated modern world. Who the Bær can also be followed via their Instagram account @whothebaer. Participants Simon Fujiwara Curators Rosa de Graaf Series SOLO DUETS Supported By AMMODO, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, and Goethe Institut Rotterdam <div class="
• Dan Zhu: Night into Nights
  Dan Zhu is an artist based between The Hague and Shenyang and winner of the C.o.C.A Award 2020. In this exhibition, she presents several large-scale works, smaller drawings and murals. The most recent among these were developed during Zhu’s return visit to China this year. Zhu is fascinated by fiction and the subconscious in their intermingling with reality. Figured together with her paintings are a combination of familiar objects and phenomena drawn from everyday life, as well as ideas and feelings that she derives from her own daydreams. In her earlier practice, Zhu commenced from a curiosity in invisible universal forces. More recently, her point of arrival lies with pigment itself. Tracing the origins of pigments to a variety of plant and earth matter drawn from a particular mountain, Zhu seeks to pivot towards imaginations of prior- and post- formations of the so-called ‘human’ body and spirit. She unravels the ‘human’ as being itself a composition of minerals more closely related to those we might imagine as inert or beyond human substance. Zhu approaches art making as a space in which to begin processing these relations. Participants Dan Zhu Curators Melchior Jaspers Network C.o.C.A. Supported By Mondriaan Fund <div class="
• Iris Kensmil: Some of My Souls
  For more than seventeen years, Iris Kensmil's artistic practice is committed to positioning the experience, activism, and intellectual work of Black people in the Western World as a central pivot to modernity’s emancipatory aims, or, as it were its progressive claims. She does this through a practice that involves studying, archiving, and painting; through a quiet exercise of reading, listening and looking. Over the years, her work has more and more focused on depicting counter-narratives to modernity by Black thinkers and activists in the “West” from the twentieth century to date. Stylistically, she found a way to break with how Black people, and especially women, have been typically painted. Instead, Kensmil presents them, in her words, "as the intellectuals they are." Raised in Suriname during her early childhood, Kensmil was born in Amsterdam, where she currently lives and works. Her solo exhibition at Kunstinstituut Melly consists of a new body of work about the Netherlands. This will be set in dialogue with a selection of paintings and drawings from 2007 to date regarding the artist’s longstanding interest in music—especially protest songs, from Blues to Soul and that inspired by African American emancipation struggles. In creating her work, Kensmil not only traces or captures personal and historic transnational experiences. She also portrays communities, events, and aesthetic forms that manifest what the scholar Paul Gilroy identifies as an “embattled cultural sensibility, which has also operated as a political and philosophical resource.” This autumn, Kensmil participates in the program Beeldbepalers at De Balie in Amsterdam, for which she is curating a program taking place on 4 September 2021. Featuring artists and curator talks, this program will involve a performance by a young generation of feminists who voice, advocate and stimulate anti-racism, educational reform and social inclusivity in The Netherlands. These women figure in Kensmil’s new series of large portraits featured in her exhibition at Kunstinstituut Melly. This series follows Kensmil’s Six Woman (Understanding Futurity) and The New Utopia Begins Here. These two art installations from 2019 include portraits of women whose work had these aims, here or abroad, paving the road for creating, imagining and working towards a better present-day and future, both for Black people as much as society at large. As part of Kensmil’s exhibition, Kunstinstituut Melly will host a special public program inspired by the artist’s 2015 art installation Dutch Nurses 2019 and her 2016 installation When I Dare to Be Powerful: May Ayim. This program will be set in dialogue with the institution’s long-term initiative 84 STEPS, focused on the intersection of art and education and including activities focused on health. These and other activities will be soon further detailed in our Engage section of this website. Participants Iris Kensmil Curators Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy Network De Balie Series SOLO DUETS Supported By AMMODO <div class="
• Jasmine Thomas-Girvan: Bathed in Sacred Fire
  Jasmine Thomas-Girvan casts lyrical bronze and silver figures with dexterity and treats glass and metals as if these were delicate lines in an automatic drawing. These poetic assemblages often include anthropomorphised characters and depict or readily incorporate natural materials from Caribbean landscapes, including seeds and gourds, palm fronds and feathers, and detritus-turned-treasure washed up from the warming Atlantic. The artist’s interests lie in folklore and myth, as much as contested histories, orality and literature. Her inspirations range from Carnival processions and Junkanoo dances to the literary work of Jamaican Poet Laureate Olive Senior and the multitudinous stories of Anansi, a trickster archetype brought from West Africa to the Caribbean through oral histories by enslaved people. Including newly commissioned work and recent sculptures, Thomas-Girvan’s solo exhibition at Kunstinstituut Melly will be her first in Europe. This exhibition by the Trinidad and Tobago-based artist is presented within the framework of Kunstinstituut Melly’s Solo Duets program, and as part of Gatherings and Passages, a new, multi-year collaboration with Sour Grass, the Barbados-based curatorial agency led by Annalee Davis and Iyawo (Holly Bynoe Young). Gatherings and Passages aims to foster a more comprehensive understanding of Caribbean contemporary art and culture. Its activities are also an opportunity to raise awareness about colonial histories, and experiences of post-colonialism and decolonisation. Participants Jasmine Thomas-Girvan Curators Holly Bynoe Young, Annalee Davis Network Sour Grass Series SOLO DUETS Supported By AMMODO, Henry Moore Foundation <div class="
• Joy Mariama Smith: Black Joy/White Fragility
  Joy Mariama Smith is an Amsterdam-based movement artist and one of the 15 artists selected for the first edition of The Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund, 2020-2021. Their work focuses on issues related to visibility, projected identities, and self-representation. Through their dance, performances, and installations, they are interested in investigating the interplay between the body and its cultural, social, and physical environment. Consent and agency are integral parts of their work. Presented here, Black Joy/White Fragility (2021) is an ongoing performance installation that centers on QTBIPOC * experience in club culture and the embodied aesthetics of possibility. Using bass, collective joy, and consent praxis, the artist and performers collectively create a healing and transformative space for bodies of color. What would it mean to create a safer space where bodies of color, can celebrate, heal, perform, transform, and transcend? Who would be given access to that space, who would be allies? Black Joy/White Fragility is a celebratory and excavational site-specific performance installation that provides a site for Black joy to be experienced and expressed. During the course of the exhibition, the club environment comes to be activated by performers, whose traces shape the installation through a process of accumulation. In extension of the work, a series of t-shirts designed by the artist can be seen and purchased on the ground floor in MELLY and online in our webshop, to transmit the sentiments of Black Joy/White Fragility beyond the walls of the institution. All performances will be scheduled in our events calendar in due course, listed in the Engage section of our website. The work exhibited will be donated to the Dutch national art collection, the Rijkscollectie. *(Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) More information about accessibility Participants Joy Mariama Smith, Pilar Mata Dupont Curators Rosa de Graaf, Jo-Lene Ong Network Hartwig Art Foundation Series Hartwig x Melly <div class="
• On Constant: New Babylon
  In 1998, Kunstinstituut Melly (then named Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art) hosted an exhibition of the legendary Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys (1920-2005), who was simply known as Constant. This comprehensive exhibition and accompanying publication focused on his decades-long project New Babylon (1959-1974). Constant blurred the lines between architecture and art, and his New Babylon crystallized this: it was an imaginary and certainly visionary future city given over to the pleasure principle. The exhibition, Constant: New Babylon was curated by architectural historian Mark Wigley and Bartomeu Mari, director of our institution from 1996 to 2002, in close collaboration with Constant. The exhibition comprised a vast series of work, ranging from models and paintings, to books and manifestos. Taken together, the works laid bare Constant’s envisaging of a society of total automation in which the need to work is replaced with a nomadic life of creative play propelled by desire. By consequence, New Babylon introduces a fictional reality in which traditional architecture comes to disintegrate along with the social institutions that it propped up. While optimistic at the start, in the later years of his work on the project Constant began to embed a more critical reflection upon the downfalls of his Utopia, as described in a lengthy exhibition review in the New York Times: “He sketches an apocalypse in black and red: madness, slavery, dehumanization, the dystopian consequences of unquenchable desire.” This autumn, Kunstinstituut Melly revisits this 1998 exhibition. On Constant: New Babylon presents a vitrine display with archival materials relating to Constant's exhibition, including correspondence, promotional materials and publications. One such document is the exhibition’s educational pamphlet, which prompted audience members to consider how New Babylon can be interpreted in light of the internet’s emergence of the internet, asking: As the world is more interconnected than ever, what does New Babylon say about society today? Is desire and play more important now than ever, and if so, what are the consequences? On Constant: New Babylon is one of several small-scale displays activating our exhibition archive; these are presented at MELLY. The current presentation is planned in conjunction with a public program organized in collaboration with Het Nieuwe Instituut and Master Interior Architecture: Research + Design (MIARD) at the Piet Zwarte of the Willem de Kooning Academy, both in Rotterdam, on the occasion of the opening of Constant 101. Participants Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, marjolijn kok, Julija Mockute, Constant Nieuwenhuys Network Constant 1 0 1, Nieuwe Instituut, MIARD <div class="
• Rotterdam Cultural Histories #20: The Museum of Education and Art
  The twentieth edition of Rotterdam Cultural Histories is a documentary display about the Museum of Education and Art sited on Witte de Withstraat from 1880 to 1884. This short-lived museum in Rotterdam was located just a few steps away from Kunstinstituut Melly’s building, which, for its part, was constructed in the 1870s as an all-women civic school. The Museum of Education and Art was founded by the Rotterdam publishers J. van der Hoeven and D. Buys. Their approach to the educational vocation of museums was peculiar, or certainly more entrepreneurial and less sacred than we deem so today: on the one hand, the museum's exhibitions presented artistic, scientific, and pedagogical materials; on the other hand, these exhibitions also functioned as commercial displays, since its many items were for sale. This two-fold purpose promoted art as tools, and that learning could be done in a newfound context. Documentary, immersive, and small in scale, this exhibition presents materials of the Museum of Education and Art drawn from Stadsarchief Rotterdam, including an 1880s neighborhood map; the museum brochure, promotional materials, and floor-plan, as well as pages of the inventory for sale of the museum's collection. This presentation is part of this exhibition series Rotterdam Cultural Histories by Kunstinstituut Melly and TENT. Also inspiring the presentation is Melly's Anchored ongoing project series, investigating histories of our building, our street, and our neighbors. Rotterdam Cultural Histories #20: The Museum of Education and Art is organized by a team at Kunstinstituut Melly: Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Julija Mockutė, Paul van Gennip, Wendy van Slagmaat-Bos, and Jeroen Lavèn. We thank Lonneke Visser, Lineke van den Bout, Maaike Heemskerk, Tim van der Post, Corinne Lampen, Martijn Verbon and Janneke Pierhagen and acknowledge the historical work done by Luca van Buren and Nationaal Onderwijsmuseum. Participants Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Jeroen Lavèn, Julija Mockute, Wendy van Slagmaat-Bos Series Rotterdam Cultural Histories, ANCHORED Supported By Stadsarchief Rotterdam <div class="
• Maria Pask: Zandra Rhodes’ Bedroom; A Room to Read Auden
  Maria Pask is an Amsterdam-based artist and one of the 15 artists selected for the first edition of The Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund, 2020-2021. The artist creates collaborative scenarios through which to examine themes of collective creativity, empowerment, and community service. Over the past two decades, central to her art-making has been the notion of reciprocity. Whether performance or installation, each of her works come to be shaped by shared experience, through which to foster an openness to difference and change. Presented here, Zandra Rhodes’ Bedroom; A Room to Read Auden (2021) sees the artist further her exploration into the fashion and textile designer Zandra Rhodes. Specifically, her bedroom. Adorned head-to-toe in the designer’s own creations—from furniture and prints, to the cushions and wallpaper—Pask regards Rhodes’ bedroom as an ideal space of retreat. One conducive to reflecting on old loves and to dream of future relationships, processed and imagined through acts of drawing, painting, and print-making. In this exhibition, Pask emulates Rhodes by creation of her own retreat, complete with fabrics by the meter, flower displays, paintings, and a bed linen range. Further to works created by the artist, are the hand-made tapestry bookmarks and film-star tapestry cushions created by Paul Wilkinson, an adult who Pask parents. Different to Rhodes, however, everything on view is for sale. The funds of which will be donated to St. Helena Cuckoo, a Netherlands-based organization run by the artist, providing living assistance to older adults. To acquire a work visit our webshop or consult the inventory available here. All purchases will be available for collection following the close of the exhibition. Some of the work exhibited will be donated to the Dutch national art collection, the Rijkscollectie. Participants Maria Pask, Pilar Mata Dupont Curators Rosa de Graaf, Jo-Lene Ong Network Hartwig Art Foundation Series Hartwig x Melly <div class="
• Kent Chan: Warm Fronts
  Kent Chan is an artist, filmmaker, and curator whose practice revolves around the tropical imaginary. Based between Amsterdam and Singapore, his artworks explore the different contexts, politics, and aesthetics of heat. The practices of other creatives often form the locus of his works, as is true of his latest installation presented here, Warm Fronts. For this exhibition, Chan furthers his interest into the past and future relationships between heat and art. He especially focuses on music emanating from across the tropics, inviting music producers and DJs in India, Indonesia, Kenya, and Brazil to create a set. Tapping into electronic music’s long-held associations as forms of futurist statement, each is alike in its desire to evoke a musicality in which climate’s past and future come into sync. These music sets shape Chan’s video installation, which, together with a series of posters by the artist designed by Jonathan Castro Alejos, imagines a radical tropical future to come. A sonic and solar alliance built not only upon their distanced shared histories, but the potentiality and connectivity of heat. For the artist, the tropics is already future; the future is heat. The work exhibited will be donated to the Dutch national art collection, the Rijkscollectie. Participants Kent Chan, Pilar Mata Dupont Curators Rosa de Graaf, Jo-Lene Ong Network Hartwig Art Foundation Series Hartwig x Melly <div class="
• Home: An Unfinished Project
  Performance times: Friday 8 April, 7–8 pm: Open Rehearsal Part 1 Saturday 9 April, 3–4 pm: Open Rehearsal Part 2 Friday 15 April, 7–8 pm: Performance Saturday 16 April, 3–4 pm: Performance Friday 22 April, 7–8 pm: Performance Finissage Saturday 23 April, 3–4 pm: Performance Finissage “If the body is a home, who is our neighborhood?” This question was the starting point to develop Home: An Unfinished Project, a performance-based exhibition by the participants of this year’s edition of our program Collective Learning in Practice (CLIP). Home: An Unfinished Project is a motion reimagining gridded neighborhoods into dynamic rhizomes; reinventing familiar structures; creating different colored roots that support community development; encountering tensions, ideas of freedom, and the many different paces of others; of touching rough edges; of making connections. A “live” exhibition, Home: An Unfinished Project opens to the public on 8 April, with new movements performed and physical elements added, removed, or transformed over two weeks. Staged in the second-floor galleries of Kunstinstituut Melly, the exhibition follows a choreographic score of movements and play. The project aims to foster reconnection; of being still while moving; as well as to express an array of feelings, from being pushed in-between things; of being pulled away from things; and of being eager to find air, roots, and balance. Read the curatorial statement on this page, below. Home: An Unfinished Project is a project of the fourth annual edition of CLIP, a six-month work/study program for youth and emerging professionals in Rotterdam. Begun in 2018, the participants of this program have been crucial in Kunstinstituut Melly’s transformation, from inspiring its name change to developing new programming activities. Ten participants are enrolled in this year’s edition of CLIP: Alma Zijderveldt, Bianca Casaburi, Elisa De La Serna Gallego, Je-Anne Dirksz, Lara Silva Santos, Lola den Dunnen, Repelsteeltje, Seré, Simon Mensger, and Yoshi So. These ten CLIP participants organize Home: An Unfinished Project under the guidance of Amsterdam-based artist and choreographer Karina Villafan and Kunstinstituut Melly’s curator of collective learning, Jessy Koeiman. Besides conceptualizing and performing the exhibition’s score, they have also commissioned the exhibition’s set design to Ludmila Rodrigues, sound/music to Hyunji Jung, and costumes to Eduardo Leon from Avoidstreet. Working closely with them as the producer of this live exhibition is Rotterdam artist Pilar Mata Dupont, who oversees other productions at Kunstinstituut Melly. Emilia Tapprest from nvisible will create the CLIP documentary for 2022. Click here to learn more about CLIP. What are we doing? (Re)imagining the neighborhood into a Rhizome. In this Rhizome, we have dancing bodies going through different experiences. Some of these bodies are busy connecting. Connecting with their own beings. Some of these bodies are spontaneously becoming, ceaselessly multiplying underground. These bundled-up bodies are forming a map through the making of movements. This map serves as a “Home” base where people come together to roam present time and space. We are creating our own reality by combining the different perspectives of what the word “Home” means to us individually. How are we doing this? We are moving. Whilst being still. We are shifting through spaces. In circles. Screaming. Laughing. Running. At times try to find a balance where we are. As if we are in our own playground. Reinventing familiar structures. Structures with different levels. Levels with different colored roots. Colors that support our Rhyzome’s growth. Our huddled bodies are pulling out and towards each other. This doesn’t stop. Long ropes give you the chance to make a few knots in Time. Now bodies are getting caught triggering a longing need for balance. Seeking eye contact for stability through connection. A desire to seek these connections can become destructive. Imagine Crawling horizontally. Moving through sandy boxes eyes shut. Dragging baggy objects of nostalgia. Looking back at these experiences from ending to start with the desire to encounter a new beginning. Why are we doing this? For the tension we encounter. For the feeling of freedom to express at your own pace. For the roughness between connections. For the eye contacts in between, pulling away - desiring balance. Our Rhizome is not the One that becomes Two or even directly three, four, five… This Rhizome is us (re)imagining hierarchal structures to an anarchic structure through different connections. With the hope to feel present in different spaces, in different phases in Time surrounded by different objects. Objects which were left behind through constant movement are experiencing Love by newcomers. These newcomers are learning how to live as if they already know how to die. Welcome to the neighborhood, we call it “Home” Participants Bianca Casaburi, Lola den Dunnen, Je-Anne Dirksz, Simon Mensger, Seré, Elisa de la Serna Gallego, Lara Silva Santos, Repelsteeltje, Yoshi So, Alma Zijderveldt Curators Jessy Koeiman, Karina Villafan Series CLIP Supported By Stichting Verzameling van Wijngaarden-Boot <div class="
• Ane Graff: The Wound in Its Entanglements
  Presented here is the first solo exhibition of Norwegian artist Ane Graff in the Netherlands. Over the past decade, she has created sculptural installations that question how ideas of human exceptionalism relate to the health and ecological disasters we face today. More recently, Graff has begun to extend her research into mental health, examining the environmental risk factors and environments that influence mental states, and the socioeconomic and physical environments shaping mental distress. Her solo exhibition pairs this more recent inquiry with earlier bodies of work, which explores related notions of inflammation, correlating the human body with the social and environmental injustices typifying our present. As part of her artistic research, Graff investigates materials, situations, and historical events that have created bodily changes, even ‘epigenetic changes.’ Namely, changes that affect the way genes work in response to environmental and behavioral factors. Her interest in the materiality of bodies has led her to identify ingredients that have, in one way or another, been linked to the chronic diseases of our times. Ranging from radioactive molecules originating from Chernobyl, to glacial till-clay deposits, road dust, and artificial flavoring found in Skittles candies, to name a few. These she derives from present-day sites and substances, as well as historical landmarks dating back to Paleolithic times. The artist regards her artworks as bodies in themselves, sites of discovery where entangled narratives and materials meet, change, and grow together, both conceptually and materially. Akin to the body, each artwork—comprising, in some cases, up to 50 ingredients—is engaged in ongoing processes of interaction, gradually shifting in composition material make-up, and appearance over time. Participants Ane Graff Curators Rosa de Graaf Network Jan van Eyck Academie Series SOLO DUETS Supported By AMMODO, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, OSL Contemporary, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs <div class="
• Ayesha Hameed: Brown Atlantis
  Presented here is the first solo exhibition of London-based artist Ayesha Hameed in the Netherlands. Over the past decade, the artist has developed a long-term body of work titled Black Atlantis. In this, she explores the Black Atlantic—the fusion of Black cultures with other cultures from around the Atlantic—and its afterlives in contemporary illegalized migration at sea, oceanic environments, and outer space. More recently, Hameed has extended her attention to the Indian Ocean world: Brown Atlantis is a new project that explores the interwoven histories of enslavement with indentureship, looking at subaquatic worlds and oceanic ecologies. Hameed’s solo exhibition presents a newly commissioned installation together with two recent textile-audio works that form part of Brown Atlantis. Her new work emerges from a recent research trip to Sri Lanka, investigating how coconuts—their origin myths, cellular structure, and circulation—can be seen to recapitulate histories of indigenous migration and colonial extraction across the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Her multi-channel sound and textile installations focus on historical events situated in subaquatic zones, highlighting the consequences of colonial occupation on both bodies and environments. During the course of the exhibition, a new episode of her ongoing radio program Brown Atlantis, broadcast on Movement Radio and Radio alAhara, will be hosted in the galleries and made available online. For more information, visit the ENGAGE section on our website. Participants Ayesha Hameed Curators Rosa de Graaf Series SOLO DUETS Supported By AMMODO <div class="