SUmoengo triennale

With the imminent departure of the American mining company Suralco, Moengo will lose its biggest employer. The community must become self-sufficient. During our residency in early 2014, we will make up a number of souvenirs with local crafters. Among others, a multicultural pangi (shawl), and a traditional marron bench that can also be used as a kit and T-shirts. The hope is to generate an alternative source of income.
For the Moengo festival of the Arts 2015, we will make an installation that tells the story of Moengo from the perspective of the future. We imagine that a new era has arrived where the community is studying strategies for survival. Learning from the past. We invite Surinamese artist Kurt Nahar and his Dada Bradas to respond to the installation with murals.

1: But the air belongs to everyone
The planting of the flag claims the ownership of the land on behalf of a nation or a company. We want to plant a flag on behalf of free thought, fantasy. Instead of soil, we focus on a fluid domain: the air, the sky. We take the flags with different skies to important places of the concession Moengo and let them flutter there. As an end and as a beginning. The depicted skies come from different parts of the world, America, China, the Netherlands, Africa.

2: Sankofa
The new, post-Suralco, Moengo can only develop slowly. The past plays an important role in this. 'Sankofa' is a word from the Akan language from Ghana, where many enslaved originate. Translated it means: go back and grab it. (going back, going, fetching, searching and taking). It also refers to the Asante adinkra symbols of the bird that pulls an egg from its back and a stylized heart. This last symbol is common in fences throughout the Caribbean, without anyone knowing the symbol as such. We have freely translated Sankofa with: 'look back and keep the good" and in Aukan: Kibii wi Koni, kibii wi sani.
The arrangement in the room shows a new t-shirt with Sankofa.

3: the workshop, detach it, make it strong
As seating furniture, there are the Dutch school benches, the traditional marron souvenir bench, and a crate bench.
The crate bank is a new joint proposal. Together with Tresna Pinas, craft shop owner and head of a primary school, we turn the wooden crates in which the fruit is delivered for the schools into a simple bench. Normally these crates are thrown away. It is easy to produce virtually free of charge. Also by children. All that is needed are some nails and some scraps of cloth.