From 13 September till 3 November, Breda will host the 11th edition of the biennial BredaPhoto Festival, the largest photography exhibition in the Benelux. Alongside young talents, top photographers will show their vision of the festival’s theme, Journeys, in industrial buildings, churches, residential buildings, parks and the rough housing estate ‘t Zoet.
Dutch Design Daily highlights a number of Dutch participants during the festival. Today: the group exhibition ‘Grounding – Stories of Migration’.
‘Grounding – Stories of Migration’ is a joint project of FOTODOK and BredaPhoto. The group exhibition in the StadsGalerij features works by artists who tell stories of first-generation migration, of those who came to the Netherlands by choice or by circumstance. It is a reflection on the processes of identity formation and creating a home in the diaspora. People who have been uprooted have to deal with and adapt to this situation again and again. Torn between different worlds, or caught between past and present, the urge to define a new sense of home – and thus a new sense of self – becomes stronger than ever.
FOTODOK began ‘Grounding – Stories of Migration’ in 2022 with an open call and several commissions. Since then, the political landscape in the Netherlands has changed significantly. In the 2023 general election, the fight against migration became an issue on which a radical right-wing party won the elections. In this current context, intimate, personal stories about migration take on added weight and significance; they carry a shared message of humanity. We highlight three of them.
For ‘The Sugarcoated Venture’, brothers Tyler and Sebastian Koudijzer travelled with their Javanese grandparents to their native Suriname. They visited places from their memories, including the remains of the Mariënburg Sugar Company. Tyler and Sebastian reflect on the impact of colonialism on their family’s journey.
The series ‘Intimicy’ by Marwan Magroun shows tender images of couples from his parents’ generation. The gestures with which they demonstrate their connection are full of love and warmth. With their fluid, reciprocal movements, the images radiate a deep sense of togetherness, expressed in the form of diptychs rather than single photographs.
For ‘Entre Dòmi i Sawaka’ (Between Dòmi and Sawaka), Kevin Osepa visited a place that shaped him: Domi, a residential area in Willemstad, Curaçao. There, Osepa listens to stories of family members – legends, beliefs, encounters with the spiritual world. They form the starting point of his work. Images become new myths. The viewer gets a glimpse of something intangible: the invisible connections between everything that exists, filled with spirit, shared words and moments in time.
