Pinkpop-up museum: patricia kaersenhouts Stained Stories

Stained Stories

The world is moving fast, especially right now. With increasing attention being paid to issues such as inequality, racism and our colonial past, we are looking at our surroundings and our past in a different way. It is scary, but also exciting. We keep discovering new stories that make our past and culture richer and more nuanced. In her newest work, patricia kaersenhout deconstructs traditional history.

On the monumental tapestries Of Palimpsests & Erasure (2023), we see drawings by 18th-century scientist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian. She travelled to Suriname as an independent woman, where she made successful books about nature. Since then, she is seen as a feminist icon standing for women's freedom and equality.

But Merian did not do her work alone. She forced several enslaved women to help her. These women not only lived in inhuman conditions, but were never included in the book as co-authors. Slowly, they have disappeared from history.

kaersenhout splashes the old drawings and colours them in. This way, kaersenhout aims to adjust the story of Merian. Merian, who was so emancipated herself, kept other women as slaves. It gives a dark and cynical edge to Merian's work. At the same time, kaersenhout especially wants to give the enslaved women back their rightful place in history. kaersenhout makes them emerge from the pages as shadows. The women are given a face again.

Joseph Bologne Chevalier de Saint-George

In this exhibition, you will hear music by Joseph Bologne Chevalier de Saint-George. He is known as the Black Mozart. They lived at the same time, and even knew each other. But unlike Mozart, Bologne Chevalier was a man of colour. Born in Guadeloupe in 1745, he was the child of a White, French slaveholder and a Black enslaved woman. He was sent to France by his father to receive a proper education. There, he emerged as a virtuoso musician. He played the violin, conducted orchestras and composes his own pieces.

Bologne Chevalier enjoyed great success and is loved in noble circles. Still, violent racism continued to haunt him. He was denied several important jobs because of his skin colour. In the French Revolution, Bologne Chevalier fought with the revolutionaries. After all, the revolutionaries said that everyone would become equal in the new society. But after the civil war, all black soldiers were captured and enslaved. Because of his major role in the revolution, Bologne Chevalier was released after a year. Bologne Chevalier was cheated; he would never be treated equally. He died in 1799, poor and alone. Two years after his death, Napoleon officially reinstated slavery in the French kingdom.

Why?

With a touring Pop-up museum, the museum aims to bring art to the public in a low-threshold way and achieve cross-fertilisation on several levels: realising a creative cultural impulse for the festival-goer and curious visitor, and creating a collaboration and idea exchange with the organisation.

The choice of this presentation is in line with Bonnefanten's policy of promoting diversity and polyphony in museum practice, topics that have topical value for all generations and at all levels of society.

Free museum visit

You can visit the Bonnefanten in Maastricht for free on a one-off basis by showing your Pinkpop wristband, until 3 September 2023.