2023

SPEME Research Exhibition Series ‘Objects & Stories’ investigates traumatic heritages and memories as well as ways of developing and improving intersectoral politics and knowledge exchange.

Questioning Traumatic Heritages and Memories

Encountering Absence is a multimedia and multilingual exhibition serving as the second edition of the SPEME Research Exhibition Series ‘Objects & Stories.’ The project aims to investigate how traumatic pasts are preserved, remembered, and transmitted in the present through space, and to promote knowledge exchange through an international and intersectoral research network. Encountering Absence combines objects of traumatic pasts with personal stories and artistic expressions in order to shed light on the experiences of those who are haunted by the absence of people disappeared, homelands lost, or histories too painful to pass on. With this exhibition, we seek to create a space that allows the viewer to encounter such intimate traumas in a dynamic space of daily life—huddled around a cafe table in the oldest Dutch artists’ association, Arti et Amicitiae. The stories and expressions of those who live in the shadows cast by the presence of absence provide insight to the many ways that traumatic heritage can transcend spatio-temporal and cultural boundaries. Such forms of remembering reveal how traumatic heritage can be transformed in the present, even as the events themselves recede further into the annals of history.

With thanks to EU Horizon2020-MSCA-RISE project ‘SPEME Questioning Traumatic Heritage: Spaces of Memory in Europe, Argentina, Colombia’ (project number 778044)