Till Friday, Noah and me will stay in the Torenkamer residency in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam. I will continue working on the Amsterdam Dakar roadtrip and explore the theme of migration in a wider context. I will research the famous film Touki Bouki by Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty, on migration from Africa to Europe.
Read my blog on the residency here: Torenkamer (in Dutch).
Photoville invited me to present Voyage à Dakar at their photo festival and offered me one of the 70 sea containers in Brooklyn Bridge Park, right next to the Hudson river, from September 13-23. I created an intimate studio with handwritten texts from my travel itinerary and photos roughly clipped with magnets to the walls of the container.
Also read the articles on Photoville Dutch Talent Featured at Photoville and “immigration more relevant than ever” in the Guardian.
Thanks to: Mondriaan Fund, Paradox, Dutch Culture USA, PHOTOVILLE.
A reunion with our Mercedes in Senegal! We are still in touch with the new owner of the car. Children broke the star from the hood of the car, it is painted grey – blueish, it has a Senegalese number plate and is still strong and running!
The work I made in Dakar, in collaboration with Senegalese photographer Selle is presented as an installation at Mozaiek in Amsterdam: a beautiful multicultural space in North African migrants neighbourhood Bos & Lommer in Amsterdam. Eight screens are showing the photo montages Selle made and one screen is showing the interview with Selle on his work.
In Voyage à Dakar I focus on the connection between Europe and Africa. I took along the stories, but also literally baggage, photo’s and video material for families on both continents. The Senegalese photographer Selle made photo montages for migrants, using my portraits and photo’s from the migrants’ collections.
Inspired by his way of working and curious about collaborating, me and Selle together made a series of collages of film stills from the Amsterdam-Dakar journey.
The installation Soil in my Pocket will open at EYE Film Institute at February 14 and will run till March 7 2017 after sunset.
The première is part of the EYE on art programme with a Q&A on Soil in my Pocket by film critic Anna Abrahams.
Visit the Soil in my Pocket blog.
Soil in my Pocket is an art installation on migration, in collaboration with visual artist Ellert Haitjema. Migration is of all times: early 1900 many Europeans left via the IJ water to South America. Leaving everything behind in Europe, hoping to find a brighter future elsewhere.
It will be a multiscreen installation, both at the outside of the impressive EYE building, along the IJ water as well as at the inside glass facade, overlooking the IJ water. The installation will run from mid February – end of March 2017.
We will collaborate with Miek Zwamborn (text), Peter Claassen (video editing), Lumen Film (production). With the support of the Mondriaan Fund and the Amsterdam Fund of the Arts. The project is a continuation of the projection on the cruise ship, from the quay in front of EYE Film Institute in September 2013.
In the next coming months we will be researching in the archive of EYE Film Institute.
For the group exhibition There’s something about my family with Fotodok, I will present the family photo album I made with my Senegalese family in Dakar, with Senegalese photographer Selle.
I will also present the first images of Voyage à Dakar.
In the autumn of 2009, a grandmother in the village of Mun, in the Ghund valley of the Tajik Pamir Mountains, approached two young researchers and asked them to write down her old recipes. “I want to share them with my children and grandchildren while I still remember what I know,” she said.
Check the book ‘With our own hands’ by Frederik van Oudenhoven and Jamila Haider, with photos from Matthieu Paley, Theo Kaye and me.
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