Press

The sixth group show opens coming May 22 at Buro Stedelijk, confronting colonial and racist legacies by positioning darkness as a force of vitality, resistance, and creation.

Through a series of materially dark works emerging from the shadows, the exhibition repositions darkness as a generative force—one capable of intervening in the world and leaving its mark. It disrupts binary frameworks that have historically opposed darkness to light, just as they have set Black against white, culture against nature, mind against body, and reason against sensibility.

May 8, Amsterdam — I Must Still Grow in the Dark, the sixth group show at Buro Stedelijk, opens this month, presenting a bold curatorial shift: darkness as a source of aesthetic, cultural, and political power. Featuring works by Paulo Nazareth, René Peña, Belkis Ayón, and others, the exhibition brings together video, photography, installation, and print to explore darkness as material, metaphor, and method.

The exhibition is curated by Buro Stedelijk’s co-founding curator Rita Ouédraogo, together with Stephanie Noach – an independent curator and Assistant Professor of Art History at Leiden University. The theme follows her research that examines the vitality of the darkness in contemporary art, challenging anti-dark and anti-Black perspectives embedded in modernity. Her dissertation, Dark Matters. Recasting Darkness with Contemporary Latin American Art, was awarded the Erasmus Dissertation Prize, recognizing it as one of the five best dissertations written at Dutch universities.

“Through its actions and interactions, artistic dark matter shakes the anti-dark and anti-Black foundations of modernity. It contests the long-standing association of darkness with evil, savagery, and ignorance.”

– Stephanie Noach

In defiance of Enlightenment ideals that equated light with reason and darkness with ignorance—and by extension, Blackness with negation—the show casts darkness as a space of resistance, protection, memory, and creation. From Ayón’s velvety black prints to Peña’s unflinching photographic studies of skin, the artworks displace light-centric visuality and invite deeper, more embodied encounters with form and meaning.

“Darkness here is not empty—it’s alive,” state the curators. “It troubles colonial visual regimes and reclaims Blackness not as void, but as world-building force.”

The scenography of the exhibition is done by Frédérique Albert-Bordenave, who brought darkness as a full force to the design of the space.

Paulus Potterstraat 13 / Museumplein 10
22 May 2025 – 17 July 2025
Opening night: 22 May, 19:30 – 21:30

Open daily with Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam ticket (Museumplein 10): 10:00 – 18:00

Buro Stedelijk is a hybrid art space that celebrates community and encourages experiment and boundary-pushing art. As a decentralized observatory, it is attentive to community needs and promotes artistic expression. By fostering collaboration between artists, communities, and institutions, Buro Stedelijk aims to inspire new perspectives and active civic participation. A place where curators, artists and other makers have the freedom to create and present new work which will give fresh impetus to Amsterdam.

For more information, visits or interview requests, please contact us via press@burostedelijk.nl.