How Do We Remember?

19 June 2024 - 5 October 2024

In the work Promised Land, on view at the Nieuwe Instituut from 20 June, visual artist Serana Angelista adds context to photographs from their family archive using natural materials such as cowrie shells. The artist shifts the viewer’s gaze from the face of the person portrayed to the circumstances in which they lived and the emotions and associations this evokes. Promised Land addresses the reliability of institutional and living archives and is part of the exhibition curated by Gyonne Zafira in Rotterdam and Aruba, How Do We Remember?

How Do We Remember?

Curator Gyonne Zafira, in collaboration with the Network Archives Design and Digital Culture (NADD), delved into the archives of the network’s member institutions, the Allard Pierson and the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision. After researching colonial heritage in the form of prints, books and videos, she asked four contemporary artists and designers from the Caribbean diaspora to add a new context to the material. Using personal memories, anecdotes, family stories and customs, the makers explore what it means to have access to, or be cut off from, sources that are assigned archival value.

Two venues

The works of Serana Angelista, Riangelo Christie, Sergio and Joseph Maduro and Ken Wolff are deliberately presented in a geographically fragmented exhibition. In the preliminary discussions leading up to the project, it became increasingly clear that institutional archives are literally beyond the reach of the communities whose stories they tell. The two venues, which show different parts of the project, reflect this distance and elusiveness. Serana Angelista’s work can be seen at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam from 20 June to 6 October. The other contributions can be seen at the Archivo Nacional Aruba from 5 July.

What is an archive?

What do we mean by a ‘real’ or trustworthy archive? How should it look, feel or sound? Not all types of archives are recognised, acknowledged and valued in the same way. The visibility and accessibility of formalised archives is greater than that of living archives such as oral histories, traditions and memories. The question is whether this also makes them more reliable, for example as sources for historical research. Now that the current historiography based on ‘reliable sources’ is coming under increasing criticism, for example because of the colonial ideology that underlies the official story, it is worth reopening a discussion about the legitimacy of different kinds of archival material. We need to talk about how stories are created, preserved, propagated, framed and transmitted – whether they are contained in institutionalised archives or in unofficial but no less ‘true’ sources.