MOTORMOND | Exhibitions

Upcoming Exhibition

THE QUILOMBO IS IN A PROCESS

23 May 2024

Poster design and protest have had a long-lasting partnership that traces, tracks and preserves many historical endeavors of liberation, emancipation, unchaining and justice. As a visual, versatile, relatively cheap and easy distributable medium, a well-designed poster can quickly capture the zeitgeist of the public space in which it is presented, grabbing the attention of its denizens and contributing to the rapid-fire spread of ideas and ideals. Design of course plays a pivotal role here: colors, lay-out, fonts, style, and artistic imagery can often visualize the proposed realities and circumvent restrictions or censorship. This can make them more memorable than other forms of advertising, such as radio or television ads, which can be easily forgotten. Artist Anish Kapoor writes in the introduction to The Art of Protest (2019): “The political slogan, the poster, and the sign or symbol of a movement speak the voice of an individual but capture the voice of the many.” From a historical perspective, one could argue that the protest poster is the surface on which art, design, activism, progress and liberation meet. The intersection between design and protest has yielded some of our culture’s most powerful and well-remembered imagery, by artists such as Micah Bazant, Josh MacPhee, Jeremy Deller, Dignidad Rebelde (Jesus Barraza, Mazatl and Melanie Cervantes), Hilda MaryDallas, Félix Beltrán, Abdias Nascimento and Kemba Earle, to name just a few. In their work they visually expressed (and continue to express) some of the most pressing matters in our society, ranging from women’s liberation queer rights and racial equality to anti-war demands and calls for environmentalist policies. **Format of the exhibition** The Quilombo is in A Process takes shape as a collaboration between MOTORMOND, The Black Archives and Oscam. This three part exhibition will manifest as an archival poster exhibition at the Motormond space on Kinkerstraat 96, a series of public lectures at The Black Archive. Simultaneously, newly commissioned poster work by five NL-based POC (graphic) artists/designers will be presented as a guerrilla poster street exhibition across the Bijlmer area in Amsterdam. This exhibition would bring the project into the public space: a space where poster material historically meets its main audience. This part of the project would run on the same dates as the archival exhibition at Motormond, and would be co-organized with OSCAM. Currently in the research phase, the Quilombo is in a process will open on the 18th of Mei 2024

Past Exhibition

A STATE OF GRACE?

25 January 2024

A STATE OF GRACE? seeks to use the exhibition as a space for transformative ritual where it will locate itself in the past, the now and actively rejecting any projection into any future. It draws inspiration from witches, cults, occultism, voodoo, and other marginalized spiritual sciences from various communities in the diaspora. Dissociations like instances of trance, speaking in tongues, soaking in the sublime, wondrous worshiping, encounters with spirits, and being in liminal space give connection to making transformative spiritual zones. STATE OF GRACE? will manifest through processions, rituals, workshops, lectures, and discursive programs.

Past Exhibition

Past A Surpassing Disaster

12 October 2023

This exhibition will pause to look at the afterlives of three international mass protests. The 2015 Baltimore Uprising will be viewed through the work of renowned Baltimorean photographer @bydvnlln. Nigeria’s 2020 (link: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/endsars/ text: #ENDSARS) protests will be visualized through the work of (link: https://www.instagram.com/ifebusola_s/ text: @ifebusola_s) . A black queer perspective of the Dutch iteration of Black Lives Matter protests will unfold in (link: https://www.instagram.com/rafik.opti/ text: @rafik.opti) ‘s work. Lastly, a historicized and submerged investigation by (link: https://www.instagram.com/x_siomara/ text: @x_siomara) on the -what if’s- of the mythos of Drexciya will re-situates this exhibition in the belly of the ship. Posters (link: https://www.instagram.com/ypsil_lon/ text: @ypsil_lon) This exhibition is generously supported by (link: https://www.instagram.com/afk020/ text: @afk020)

Past Exhibition

Brave Beauties in Communion

28 July 2023

Brave Beauties in Communion: Imaging Black Queer LiberationThis exhibition brings together works by contemporary photographers Daniel Obasi, DeLovie Kwagala, Keren Lasme, Nella Ngingo, and Stephen Tayo in an effort to understand the image of black queer liberation through a self directed and self sustained lens. Nella Ngingo's series is a necessary point of departure in imaging the queer subject. Departing from the pink washed glamor that over saturates queer imaging (specifically in Europe and North America), Ngingo chooses familiarity as a lens for her subjects. Lastly, Brave Beauties in Communion: Imaging Black Queer Liberation is an ode to Motormond’s ethos of circulating critical pan-diasporic culture. This is a communioning, a politically charged coming together of queer Africans in diaspora and queer indigenous Africans. A space for symbiosis and eccentric economies, with the need to pan diasporic-ally politically align as the strongest under-current. 1 Blackpentecostal Breath The Aesthetics of Possibility – Ashon T. Crawley 2

Past Exhibition

You Can Still Be Happy and Get Wet In An Exploding Building

24 September 2021

Motormond proposes a film exhibition against all weather conditions. This is an open challenge to meteorological conditions – we rise above rain and wind; we do not care about getting wet. Exploring the intertwinement of weather and emotion, we wish to talk about the material side of feelings. We do not feel or behave in isolation. When talking about how we are feeling right now, not only are we dependent on others and their feelings, but we also necessarily have to react to our environment. Where we are is an important part of who we are or who we have become. Living in a rainy city such as Amsterdam means something. The obvious connection between weather and our frame of mind is manifested in our activities and decisions – in our actions as agents. In this sense, we are embedded in a material reality with physical aspects that shapes our choices and, sometimes, emotions. We are not totally free to feel what we would like to, but we are free enough to self-consciously challenge our physical conditions, one of them being the weather conditions. Through the screening of a series of films that talk about how it feels to be a human, we wish to explore the material relation between our unavoidable physical environment and emotions. Thanks to a very particular setting, an industrial terrace of a semi-abandoned building, we are taking the risk of getting wet and not being able to do anything about it. Despite this meteorological risk of screening films in the open air, we want to explore how this actually makes us feel. By highlighting the material side of feeling through the connection with the weather inclemency, we discover that feelings are actually touched by materiality but that materiality can be, in fact, also touched by feeling.

Past Exhibition

Female: A Condition Devoid of Desire

15 August 2021

Meet the ‘Female’ at Motormond. Being female consists of many aspects beyond what meets the eye and eventually becoming a female is an open and ongoing interpretation. Andrea Long Chu’s Females (2019) and Valerie Sonas’ SCUM Manifesto (1967) interpretations are the core theses that this exhibition roots itself. Through the paintings and photographs of Alma Surreal, Lorenco, Amjad Hashem, and Jean-Paul Paula, ‘Female’ examines how desire relates to the construction of femaleness and its image, operating between the boundaries of the authentic self desired self and the desire projected onto oneself by others.

Past Exhibition

Becoming

6 May 2021

BECOMING is an exhibition that explores how materials and identities become. Dough communicates with an intricate, intimate, and intelligent softness. Even when it hardens, it still keeps a soft underbelly. Clay on the other hand is like a cat. You can only work with it when it lets you and it will only be soft for an instance. So we decided to marry the two and see what will become of them?Through this exhibition, we have also looked at the concept of becoming from an identity perspective. Thus becoming complex. We have invited, Iriée Zamblé , Richard Kofi, and Kenneth James Aidoo to look at the fridges of the oeuvre and pull from works that haven't been exhibited before. So doing, we will increase the diversity of their artworks that are visible to the public. This also made the curatorial process conversational. There was no pointing and pulling by the curator; the curator provided space for artists to throw smoke at their simplified public identities. Taking the concept of single stories and throwing at those who seek to create them. Be complex, diverse, and BECOME! Curated by Musoke Nalwoga

Past Exhibition

Inside The Outside

21 April 2021

Come see our debuts exposition in person. INSIDE THE OUTSIDE explores allyship through performance, photography and sculpture.