Motormond, the gallery in subversion, is a project that developed as a reaction to the consequences of the BLM movement for BIPOC artists on the Amsterdam cultural scene. Within the Amsterdam setting, galleries that had never paid attention to BIPOC artists were opening up doors to multiple BIPOC artists in a rush. At first there was excitement among friends that were getting signed. But then the ruthlessness of the gallery contracts started to set in. Artists were getting charged over 50% on sales. The meaning and stories that their work was about were being left behind and the focus was on selling. Within these galleries the prices of their artworks were so high that people from their communities couldn’t buy them.
We decided to open Motormond, as a gallery in subversion, a gallery that took 0% of the sales of our artists. We also decided to actively foster environments and exhibition settings where the autonomy of the stories, research, and artist’s work were being preserved. We focused our attention on an audience that was composed of our artists communities. We were not looking for easy sales by reaching buyers with a lot of money. One of our main goals was to keep the prices reasonably low and to encourage buyers from within the BIPOC communities.
Motormond has put on exhibitions that brought forth big talents. These are successes that we don't take lightly. We have managed to activate an ecosystem where artists with first and second generation migrations backgrounds can also have a network that they can lean on.
On Thursday November 14th, we invite you to PrintRoom Rotterdam for an informal lunch and launch of Motormond magazine together with curator Musoke Nalwoga and artist Sophie Douala and the lead collaborators in the making of Motormond Magazine.
For our first time at Unseen Amsterdam, we have commissioned a new series of photographs from the talented and now well established artist Nella Ngingo. Errant Black Girlhoods is a new series of photographs by Burundian photographer Nella Ngingo (1992, Burundi). With Errant Black Girlhoods Ngingo holds the sensitive space between masculine presenting black women and trans men.
Flight is Organizing Towards Flight; the role that poster design played in the Independence Movements in former Dutch colonies
FEEL LIKE MY ANCESTORS HAVE LEFT ME A 1000 VOICE NOTES TO DECIPHER is a lecture that delves into Samboleap Tol’s artistic practice. Tol’s work is heavily inspired by indigenist animist offering practices from Cambodia and the wider Southeast Asian region. Ancestral veneration practices became important to her as a way to directly connect with her ancestors, whom she feels estranged from due to postcolonial displacement and brutality.
Drawing on Audre Lorde’s timeless essay ‘Uses of the Erotic’ Alexine Gabriela invites you to delve into the erotic. Western knowledge systems, tools of the imperialist and capitalist regime of the West, dissociate us from our bodies which means that we have lost touch with the truths that lie deeply within the body, within the erotic.
Dtorytelling as Narrative Reclamation of Healing Heritages: Disrupting Colonial Visuality of Healing Ontologies — is a critical diving into of archival ethnographic records of indigenous healing rituals and practices, in which Basia Diagne examines the role of the camera and image-making as a colonial apparatus of subjugation and narrative erasure. Drawing from Tina M. Campt’s method of activating the archive by “listening to images”, she invites the audience to depart from this historical narrative, and participate instead in a practice of listening & hearing what has been left unsaid.
Boston Tea Party, Nutrition for Carers: Casting Spells into Oyster Shells is a manifestation of artists and researcher Eshwari Ramsali’s dream.
Pedagogies of the Sacred is a collective reading led by Devika Chatoe. It is an essay by M. Jacqui Alexander. Following the reading there will be space to ruminate on what it means to access ancestral knowledge and practices that have been erased or rendered invisible through migration, colonization.
other indias with contributions from Rah Naqvi will guide you through — spirit of dissent — a sonic intervention informed by a very long history of dissent, by elders and peers who have founded the basis for our resistance. These sustained practices of continuance, of resilience, amidst adversity, born from, and despite systemic oppression, have created alternative pathways to liberation. Pathways, that reject and urge a dismantling of the current Brahminical structures of governance and the imposition of its future.
As part of the current exhibition, A State of Grace?, Ayomide Tejuoso, presents the performative installation Pariah on the 15th of February.
As part of an upcoming exhibition at Motormond, Martin Toloku is looking for Seven people of color who are ready to be emotionally reminded by the practice of mourning for a processional performance (match pass the street ).
They should be ready to embrace any reaction which might arise from the public as a shock, provocation and make it their strength during the performance. All performers will be dressed in a total Black outfit to signify an occasion of funeral. In silence and slow motion you will walk with the body of the artist lying in a coffin tricycle, from a location to the final destination where the performance continues for a longer duration.
Also any performer who is very good at riding a tricycle ( fiets drie wielen) is highly needed for the piece.
A STATE OF GRACE seeks to use the exhibition as a space for transformative ritual. It draws inspiration from witches, cults, occultism, voodoo, and other marginalized spiritual sciences from various communities in the diaspora.
For the finissage of our current exhibition ; PAST A SURPASSING DISASTER, Devin Allen has been invited to give an artist talk at Motormond. The artist talk will take the format of a show and tell where Devin will go through his extensive oeuvre, and he will tell the stories behind his amazing images.
We extend an invitation for you to immerse yourself in an auditory expedition, as we transmit sonic waves calling for a departure from the enduring shadows that surround us.
Public program:
To Logan
To Dandy
To Precious
To Chimira
Where beauty lies within the ruins, how does one move as a guest in their own skin, in their own country? Language, faithful companion, can be both loyal and wayward. Examining the introverts; hidden wishes, amidst the vibrant chaos of Lagos.
Join us on the 19th of October for the OPENING of the exhibition Past a Surpassing Disaster: From Film Through Performance Towards Photography.
What is the role of your artistic practice in your imagination of social and political change? How do artists / photographers negotiate their practices between the global north and the global south? What is lost and gained in translation?
What: Open Photoshoot session
When: 20 August (19:00 — 21:00)
Where: Kinkerstraat 96
How: Dress in your Sunday best!
What: public program
Date: 01-August-2023
Time: 19:00 - 21:30
Location: Kinkerstraat 96
Brave Beauties in Communion defines queerness as of transformation, of shapeshifting, of fluency, of form to deform; of code to switch, of mimicry, of flamboyance, of grace, of fluidity, and of bravery.
Thank you for coming to the opening of our new exhibition — Brave Beauties in Communion: Imaging Black Queer Liberation!
To be punctured with meaning is a method, it puts forward a way of watching filming in translation. To pause between scenes and to puncture a film with poetry, to puncture a scene with a painting, to puncture a scene with a performative sculpture, to puncture a scene with a performance.
Conversation & book launch: Motormond will be hosting a conversation for the launch of the book Imagining a Queer and Black Institution, which came together as a collection of five essays that all conjured up a black and queer institution. Guests include Siv Greyson, Christie van Zyl, Lebo Diverse Mashifane, Jasmin Sharif, Kenza Badi, Musoke Nalwoga
The A Durable Swagger-scape exhibition is coming to its end. A Durable Swagger-scape pulledfrom multiple strings to tell a story that very much requires building upon, we briefly exploredmusic videos, thinking with the glam and glitter of musical performances and the sonic implications of sustainability. With this Finissage, we have invited prominent photographers, stylists, and writers on the Amsterdam scene to further ground and deepen the topics explored in the exhibition.
2020
Musoke Nalwoga
Aida Ra Mana
Dtorytelling as Narrative Reclamation of Healing Heritages: Disrupting Colonial Visuality of Healing Ontologies — is a critical diving into of archival ethnographic records of indigenous healing rituals and practices, in which Basia Diagne examines the role of the camera and image-making as a colonial apparatus of subjugation and narrative erasure. Drawing from Tina M. Campt’s method of activating the archive by “listening to images”, she invites the audience to depart from this historical narrative, and participate instead in a practice of listening & hearing what has been left unsaid.
- March 29
- 19:00-21:00
- Motormond, Kinkerstraat 96
Following this, Basia will present her work with SAGO Journal discussing narrative reclamation through counter-archiving audiovisual heritages of healing from around the world, and sharing healer stories from Sago Journal. A sonic mix of ambient, tranceful & healing sounds will follow over drinks to close the evening, curated by Basia + dear friend & collaborator Felix de Jong.”
Basia Diagne is a visual storyteller, researcher & scholar of traditional medicine. Her research, practice and discourse centers around art-science, critical ethnography and cosmologies of healing.
Felix de Jong is a music curator, producer & digital crate digger, expressing the universal language of music by weaving together global sonic cultures
This programme manifests as part of our current exhibition A STATE OF GRACE: of Witches, of Seance, of Voodoo, of Speaking in Tongues and Othered instances of Diasporic TRANS-porta(l)tion.
Graphic design: Alyson Sillon
A STATE OF GRACE is generously supported by the Gemeente Amsterdam West.
