Initiated by artist Lawil Karama in conversation with historian Megan Hoetger, The Nature of Remembering is a group exhibition featuring multimedia research projects that move between interrogation of normative memory politics and co-experimentation with environmental and more-than-human bodies.

The exhibition title carries in it two meanings: on the one hand, nature is evoked, drawing focus to actants, actors, and animacies beyond and beside the human, who witness, participate in, index, recollect, foretell, and haunt historical time. On the other hand, the idiomatic expression the nature of is taken up as a provocation, pushing against pervasive ideological and violently enforced notions of remembering and of commemorating.

Running through all projects is a commitment to practices of frictioning: engaging technologies against their colonial grain, and lingering in the affectively, ancestrally, archivally, and forensically intertwined conditions of lived experience and knowledge production. Collectively, the works ask: Who, or what, enframes and enlivens acts of remembering violence, which have been rendered invisible, unspeakable, and unthinkable?

The exhibition features work by Samuel Baidoo, Michèle Boulogne, Laura Fong Prosper and Tin Wilke, Lawil Karama, Aram Lee, Komtouch Napattaloong, Bart Seng Wen Long, and Kaisa Saarinen.

The Nature of Remembering also includes an extensive context programme with performances, talks, screenings, and a special music programme during ADE.

Press kit (zip)
Press release (pdf)

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Initiated by Lawil Karama 

At W139, we work collectively and intersectionally on exhibitions, guided and led by the initiating artists that we invite. This exhibition has been developed with guest curator Megan Hoetger leading the process, together with the team of W139: Tomas Adolfs, André Avelãs, Cari Călinici, Dana Claasen, Jacob Dwyer, Levi van Gelder, Dil Ghale, Lies Kelder, Geer van der Klugt, Monica Liu, Macarena Magaña, Margarita Osipian, Annette Wolfsberger, and our amazing team of volunteers.

Visual identity: Nuno Beijinho

This exhibition is generously supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Mondriaan Fund, and Fonds 21.

The production of the work of Lawil Karama was supported by Amarte Fund, with special thanks to Stefanie Tseggai (Desta’na, pavilion design), Maarten Milttenbrug van Duyts (pavilion construction advise), Yavuz Selim Isler (projection color grading), and Malaia Simms (sound design).

The residency of Komtouch Napattaloong is part of the Exchanges programme by the Prince Claus Fund, with the support of the Amsterdam City Council.

The production of the work by Michèle Boulogne was supported by a residency at AGA Lab.

Rubber Dreams of Its Lifetime by Komtouch Napattaloong, Bart Seng Wen Long and Kaisa Saarinen is funded by KONE Foundation.

Thanks to Erwin van ‘t Hart for film-technical support with the work of Laura Fong Prosper and Tin Wilke.

For Aram Lee’s work, special thanks goes out to grandmothers Merapi Obermayer and Mei Ling Wan, and granddaughter Fransisca Angela. Sound design by Mint Park.

Partners: Amsterdam Dance Event