READ OUR COLONIAL INHERITANCE - POETRY & FILM SERIES
Poetry and film series Read Our Colonial Inheritance is now online! With artists, writers and storytellers Joshua Timisela, Manuwi C Tokai, Kevin Groen and Nisrine Mbarki.
Read Our Colonial Inheritance invites poets, writers, and spoken word artists to create an artistic reflection inspired by a theme and an 'object' from the exhibition 'Our Colonial Inheritance' that resonate with their stories. The artists perform their work in an intimate setting around their chosen 'object' in the exhibition space. Beyond Walls co-facilitated, documented, and captured the process, including the intimate live performances, followed by talks afterward. Beyond Walls has transformed this all into a series of poetic short films that echo the impact of our colonial inheritance and call upon colonial institutions to respond.
Read Our Colonial Inheritance is developed and produced by Beyond Walls, Het Tropenmuseum and Read My World.
Stills from the moving performance of Joshua Timisela
For this poetry program & film series we invited Manuwi C Tokai to create an artistic intervention based on a chosen 'object' from the exhibition that resonated with her and her chosen theme Ancestors. Together with people from her community in both the Netherlands and Suriname, she searched for the most urgent question that lived within this context.
Manuwi's process did not lead to an 'object' from the exhibition. But to a Kalinya baby, allegedly stored in the museum depot for almost 100 years.
Together with her community including her ancestors, she shared her truth in the performance “Dear ancestors, we miss you”. The message of Manuwi and her community of the Kalinya Terewuyu Nation was and is clear. “Return the Human Remains of the Kalinya Terewuyu Nation Let Our Ancestors RIP.'“ As part of the performance they reclaimed the human remains of their ancestors and handed over a copy of their official claim to the Dutch state. Read their full statement here.