The associate artist for the 77th Holland Festival in 2024 is Brazilian theatre director, filmmaker and writer Christiane Jatahy (Rio de Janeiro, 1968). Christiane Jatahy will include Hamlet present, a co-production with Paris-based Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe. Shakespeare's play will have a female title role and is the starting point for thinking about the world we live in, and how to change it.
2024 is the sixth consecutive year that the Holland Festival invites an associate artist to inspire the programme. The associate artist is always an international creator with a broad perspective who often works in different disciplines, has an interesting artistic practice of his own and makes a significant contribution to the festival.
Emily Ansenk, Holland Festival director: "Christiane Jatahy is a great theatre and film maker who often takes Brazilian society in all its complexity as her subject. In it, she does not pose as an objective observer, but takes a close look at existing mechanisms with her sharp and critical eye. She pays attention to marginalised groups and their stories that need to be seen and heard. She has a unique visual language, constantly playing - including with the help of the camera - with the role of the spectator, with reality and fiction, both in images and physically. With her knowledge of the Brazilian cultural context and her experience in collaborating with European theatres and classical texts, she brings to the Holland Festival, in addition to her own new and existing work, new perspectives and introduces us to artists, thinkers and musicians new to the Netherlands."
Chistiane Jatahy: "When I realised what it means to be invited as an associate artist, an image that often inspires me immediately came to mind: that of a stone falling into the water and spreading its influence with ever-growing circles. This image was accompanied by joy at the invitation but also the realisation of the many possible artistic encounters. From the presentation of my work and the exchange about working methods, to - and this is the moment when the circles expand - the relationship with different audiences, makers, spaces and places in the city, is what touches me so deeply."
Since 2003, Christiane Jatahy has been building a body of work that explores border areas between different art disciplines. She makes multidisciplinary work, text theatre and community theatre in which she collaborates with local artists. Besides her theatrical work, she makes (documentary) films. Her first feature-length film was released in 2010, A Falta Que Nos Move ('The lack that moves us'), based on a theatre performance of the same name. In 2012, she contributed to the cultural programme of the London Olympics with the project In the comfort of your home, a series of interventions, documentaries, films and performances by 30 Brazilian artists from London homes.
The work What if they went to Moscow by Christiane Jatahy featured at the 2015 Holland Festival, a contemporary adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters. The Walking Forest (Holland Festival 2016) was inspired by Shakespeare's Macbeth and posed the question of what would happen if the cruel King Macbeth were now in power in Brazil.
In 2022, she received the Golden Lion for her theatrical oeuvre at the Venice Biennale. She was described in the jury report as "a harsh and sharp observer of the violent brutality of our world". Christiane Jatahy works with Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris, Schauspielhaus Zurich, Arts Emerson Boston and the Piccolo Teatro de Milano.
Associate artists in the Holland Festival
Previous associate artists include ANOHNI (2023), Angélique Kidjo and Nicolas Stemann (2022), Gisèle Vienne and Ryuichi Sakamoto (2021), Bill T. Jones (2020) and Faustin Linyekula and William Kentridge (2019).
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