Museum Takeover Hermitage 2018: Traverse Heritage: Voice Body Movement
A site-specific intermedia performance at the Hermitage Museum, Amsterdam and was a takeover by an intergenerational Surinamese choir and dancers. I directed and choreographed this project which was the first of its kind in the Museum. We took over the museum for 3 hours critiquing and offering bodies of colour moving inside the museum as an intervention to Dutch colonial histories. The museum had up to this point only showcased Rembrandt and other “Masters” of the Golden Age.
The work used music, dance and movement to critique. It involved a partnership with the University of Amsterdam and the Moving Matters Travelling Workshop. As a result of the takeover and our commentary on decolonizing the museum within the performance in October 2019 we heard that the museum had decided to diversify its art objects in the museum to include portraits of former slaves and people of colour from Dutch colonial histories.
