#65 Keti Koti Westerpark x Kunsttraject

click here for Google Maps

On July 1st, we commemorate and celebrate Keti Koti—”Broken Chains” in Sranantongo—marking the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the ABC-SSS islands. Buro Stedelijk presents a collaborative spatial intervention that transforms the Staatsliedenbuurt into a poetic memorial landscape.

This year’s collaboration with Keti Koti Westerpark and Kunsttraject features writer and spoken word artist Babs Gons, whose powerful poem “Wie zijn we morgen” (Who are we tomorrow) unfolds across the Kunsttraject windows throughout the neighborhood. Each stanza creates waypoints in an embodied journey of reflection, inviting visitors to walk, experience, and sit with histories often relegated to the margins of Dutch collective memory.

We hereby seek to understand what it means to live as a subject of colonial power and how the legacies of slavery and colonialism live on for descendants as citizens within the Netherlands today.

Designer, writer, and educator Jeanine van Berkel translates Gons’s words into a visual language that draws from vernacular traditions of resistance and commemoration. Van Berkel’s research into visual genealogies of the African diaspora informs her design approach, creating a dialogue between text and image that resonates with both historical depth and contemporary urgency.

Through this interdisciplinary collaboration, we create a temporary monument that goes beyond mere acknowledgement of our colonial past. Together, we explore modalities of celebration, resistance, and mourning—examining how public space can become a site for collective reckoning and imagining new possibilities for shared futures.

June 1 – July 2
Kunsttraject Staatsliedenbuurt
24/7 on show
Free entrance / Gratis toegang

Route: Bentinckstraat 23 – Bentinckstraat 25 –Van Boetzelaerstraat 56 – Van Boetzelaerstraat 80 – Van Boetzelaerstraat 92 – Van Hogendorpstraat 205