Over the past year, the global pandemic and reignited Black Lives Matter protests have had a huge impact on our daily reality. A Funeral for Street Culture seeks to explore and make visible the sense of loss and other consequences of these events within art and culture.
The group project, curated and initiated by Metro54 and curator Rita Ouédraogo, looks at the way grief and bubbling-up frictions are given space within contemporary street culture and provides a ritual for saying goodbye to social trauma. In this way, this project seeks to create and represent a new vision of the future from the ashes of street culture.
In recent decades, street culture has been a global platform for contrarian cultural expression and resistance, and has had a major impact on culture, art and design as a result. The street is the stage where people come together in solidarity and struggle.
The street is in protest. The protest expresses itself in various forms that blur the boundaries of cultures, art and design - without sacrificing identity or political consciousness in the process. As a result, new forms of expression and creations emerge time and again. The ownership of these lies with the communities that created them.
But what happens when this culture is adopted and commercialised by brands and institutions? To what extent are these processes of institutionalisation and hyper-commercialisation a death sentence for street culture? Is there still space for counterculture? What might this space look like?
With artists, poets, designers, thinkers and scammers, Metro54 and Rita Ouédraogo explore these questions. They explore the ways in which street culture intertwines or detaches itself from disciplines and dogmas such as design, performativity, queerness, fashion, and activism.
A Funeral for Street Culture is thus a critical celebration of street culture and is presented in the form of meetings, installations, performances, talks and commemorations. There will also be a parallel public programme, curated by Metro54 and Rita Ouédraogo, consisting of both digital and physical, intimate gatherings. These will be designed in terms of content with the participating artists.
A selection of participating artists:
Metro54 is a platform for young artists, thinkers, activists, writers and hustlers who are pushing the boundaries of their (art) disciplines, with a special focus on the talents who draw their inspiration from global and contemporary visual and sonic cultures.
Rita Ouédraogo studied Cultural Anthropology at the UvA and also lives and works in Amsterdam. Her work as a curator, writer and research and community programmer is informed by her interest in the African diaspora, decolonising organisations, institutional racism and pop culture.
Setareh Noorani & Jelmer Teunissen: For this group show & audience programming, architect and artist Setareh Noorani and designer Jelmer Teunissen have designed a non-hierarchical space that plays with the inside-outside opposition. The result is a space through which visitors can walk, mourn and reflect. Pris Roos is an artist, curator, researcher and storyteller, working with different media such as painting, spoken word, video, performance and installation. By listening to and observing the people she encounters, she reflects on topics such as identity, migration and memory.
JeanPaul Paula is a creative director, stylist, photographer and director, looking at topics such as fashion and pop culture through the lens of gender, kinship and belonging.
- Dates 10 June - 8 Aug 2021
- Presented by Metro54
- Curators Metro54 & Rita Ouédraogo
- With contributions by Kenneth Aidoo | Frédérique Albert-Bordenave | Oko Ebombo Cédric Kouamé | Cengiz Mengüç | Narges Mohammadi Bodil Ouédraogo | JeanPaul Paula | Pris Roos | Stephen Tayo Pillars of Autumn - Tobi Balogun, Walter Götsch, Wes Mapes & Dion Rosina
- Graphic design Lydienne Albertoe
- Spatial Design Setareh Noorani & Jelmer Teunissen
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