FOTODOK is proud to present Grounding – Stories of Migration as part of BredaPhoto Festival 2024, running from September the 13th until November the 3rd 2024. The exhibition features works by Thana Faroq, Hanna Hrabarska, Sebastian Koudijzer i.c.w. Tyler Koudijzer, Marwan Magroun, Kevin Osepa, Giya Makondo-Wills, and Nael Quraishi.
Grounding – Stories of Migration presents works by seven artists that tell stories of first generation migration – those who came to the Netherlands by choice or by circumstance. These works reflect processes of diasporic homemaking and identity formation: both ever-evolving pursuits for the uprooted. Split into parts, or caught between past and present, the urge to define a new sense of home – and a new sense of self – becomes stronger than ever.
Set in the Netherlands, Nael Quraishi’s This Is Home After All presents a series of subtle observations made from the artist’s living room. Looking out from his window, Quraishi grasps at the clothing, gestures, sounds and scents that recall his birth city of Karachi, capturing fragments in text and image.
In The Sugarcoated Venture, brothers Tyler and Sebastian Koudijzer travel with their Javanese grandparents to their birth country, Suriname. Visiting several sites of memory, including the remains of Sugar Company Mariënburg, they consider the impact of colonialism on their family’s journey.
Elsewhere, Thana Faroq’s how shall we greet the sun unveils the complex emotional lives of young women refugees living in the Netherlands, including the personal stories of the artist herself.
Marwan Magroun’s Intimacy points to a language of close connectivity amongst first generation migrants.
In Hanna Hrabarska’s My Mom Wants to Go Back Home, the artist documents a move from Ukraine to the Netherlands, the desire to return home, the impossibility of doing so, and the experience of settling gradually in another country.Meanwhile, Kevin Osepa works with the familial oral history and mythology in the heart of Curaçao, connecting people and spirits, realities of streets and domestic objects and rituals.
Finally, Giya Makondo-Wills’ A Neighbourhood tackles the dynamics of migration to the Netherlands, exploring how discrimination and racism infiltrate society, informing everything from legal procedure to casual neighbourhood chatter. Ultimately, these sentiments offer a hostile backdrop to each new “welcome”. In response to the questions posed formally by the Dutch immigration system, Giya Makondo-Wills continues along similar lines, asking several questions of her own: “Is the Netherlands a place for me? Am I safe? Am I allowed to question this place? Must I become you to be able to stay? What values shall I keep and what ones do you not like? Do you ever think, why am I here?”
Through an open call and several commissions, FOTODOK began working on Grounding – Stories of Migration in 2022. Since then, the Dutch political landscape has shifted considerably; the 2023 general election saw a far-right party become the country’s largest, securing almost a quarter of the national vote. Its visions include a ban on mosques and the Koran, as well as strict limits on numbers of newcomers, international students and foreign workers. At odds with the Dutch constitution, this violent rhetoric actively shapes a climate of xenophobia in the Netherlands, with destructive implications for those that have made it their home.
In this context, the intimate personal stories that make up this exhibition become political, carrying a shared message of humanity. As bell hooks writes in Belonging. A Culture of Place, “Talking about place, where we belong, is a constant subject for many of us. We want to know if it is possible to live on the earth peacefully. Is it possible to sustain life? Can we embrace an ethos of sustainability that is not solely about the appropriate care of the world’s resources, but is also about the creation of meaning – the making of lives that we feel are worth living?”
To feel grounded is to feel certain: rooted in the familiar. It’s a feeling that stems from an intimate connection with a place, or the mutuality of relations with people around you. It is present in your body when you walk, knowing that your ancestors walked the same land. It breathes when you speak, assured that your voice is not only heard, but actively awaited. To be grounded is to be supported when you act, secure in the rights and freedoms you know you can rely on.
The process of grounding is something else entirely. It’s a search for certainty; a journey that starts in one place and leads you to another. Through movement, ties to past realities are dislocated, and connections must be shaped anew. All the while, you yearn for what was left behind, as well as for belonging in a place that doesn’t want you. Here, it is not the ground that holds and uplifts us, but it is us who holds and uplifts the ground.
Curator: Daria Tuminas
Design: Studio Sara Cristina Moser
Translation and editing: Felix van de Vorst, Hannah Vernier and George H. King
Giya Makondo-Wills, Kevin Osepa, Hanna Hrabarska each received a FOTODOK commissioning grant to develop their work for the Grounding – Stories of Migration exhibition.
Grounding – Stories of Migration is part of BredaPhoto Festival 2024 programme, and is realised in co-production.
With the support of the City of Utrecht and Mondriaan Fonds.
Installation shots © Nastya Vinogradova
