Soengoe Kondre / Submerged Heritage
The exhibition Soengoe Kondre / Submerged Heritage takes you to the interior of Suriname, the former Dutch colony on the Caribbean coast of South America, where an area covering 1560 km2 was submerged under water after the completion of the Afobaka dam in 1964. Built as the country was transitioning to full independence, which would come in 1975, the dam’s far-reaching consequences included the mass displacement of Maroons – the descendants of Africans enslaved under colonialism who, beginning in the 18th century, fought and escaped their bondage and established independent inland settlements.
The research aims to critically investigate, through a focus on the Afobaka dam, how Dutch colonialism is intertwined with global capitalism. By highlighting aspects such as environmental destruction, extraction of resources, displacement, socio-political and cultural annihilation, the aim is to ignite a deeper dialogue about the impact of this colonial project.
