To start with:
Last day Tell Freedom in KADE in Amersfoort. Guest curators: Nkule Mabaso and Manon Braat
Tell Freedom is the next in the on-going series of country-based exhibitions at Kunsthal KAdE, which has included Soft Power Arte Brasil (2016), The Squarest Rectangle, Tom Barman sees all sides of a century of Belgian art (2014), Now Japan (2013), and Who More Sci-Fi Than Us, contemporary art from the Caribbean (2012).
The exhibition Tell Freedom comprises new and existing work by fifteen young artists from South Africa. In it, they reflect critically on the past, present and future of their country in a global context.
To me the exhibition did not have the same high level as the exhibition The Rainbow Nation. Contemporary South African sculpture in Beelden aan Zee in Scheveningen (2012) in terms of display and content. Possibly that also has to do with the impressive space of Beelden aan Zee (Sculptures at sea). Kade is divided into lots of small rooms. As a result, the works do not relate to each other and the exhibition stays framented.
However there were a few nice surprises.
The artist who impressed me the most in Amersfoort was Neo Matloga (2016-2018 Ateliers) https://www.neomatloga.com/.
Furthermore, there were of course the dogs by Kemang Wa Lehulere. Dogs are everywhere and in many ways represented in the art of South Africa. Here they are looking at car tires. Both dogs and car tires have complex different meanings in South African.
Further impression
Amsterdam Stadsarchief
Samen weer aan tafel / Together at the table again
About Jewish survivors of the Holocaust before the war, during the war and after the war.
Jewish Museum in Amsterdam
The Jewish Historical Museum is a beautiful, high-profile museum that occupies four monumental synagogue buildings in the middle of the Jewish Cultural Quarter. It provides a unique picture of past and present Dutch Jewish life in all its facets.
At the moment they have an exhibition about the relationship between the Jewish community in the Netherlands and the House of Orange. (The rather inscrutable website, incomprehensible to me, has, as far as I can find, no information in English. However, the texts in the exhibition are NL / Eng)
Portuguese synagogue
Worth a visit when in Amsterdam.
And in Haarlem:
The text panels are somewhat woolly and the connections sometimes doubtful. This does not alter the fact that interesting works can be seen by f.i.:
The very entertaining Where is Rocky II by Pierre Bismuth. He went in search of a mysterious and unknown work of art by the painter Ed Ruscha. What intrigued Bismuth was that Ruscha has always kept quiet about this work and that hardly anyone knows the exact location of the sculpture.
Or Kerry James Marchall. He responds to the fact that black artists and black models are hardly represented in the canonical history of Western art.
Plus Laurence Aëgerter. She focusus on (in)visibility.
And Mieke Bal. Cultural theorist, art critic and video artist Mieke Bal instensively studied a painting by Hals: the portrait of the famous philosopher René Decartes. Her film is a mixture of documentary and theoretical fiction.
And for 18e century beauty lovers.
Classic Beauties in Hermitage Amsterdam. With several masterpieces by Canova and others. Certainly worth a visit.
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