Sebastian & Tyler Koudijzer

FOTODOK x BredaPhoto

With Grounding – Stories of Migration, FOTODOK ✕ BredaPhoto Festival present works by seven artists that tell stories of first generation migration – those who came to the Netherlands by choice or by circumstance. These works reflect processes of diasporic homemaking and identity formation: both ever-evolving pursuits for the uprooted. Split into parts, or caught between past and present, the urge to define a new sense of home – and a new sense of self – becomes stronger than ever.

Participating artists: Giya Makondo-Wills, Hanna Hrabarska, Kevin Osepa, Marwan Magroun, Nael Quraishi, Sebastian Koudijzer & Tyler Koudijzer, Thana Faroq

Curated by Daria Tuminas

In 1972, Sebastian and Tyler Koudijzer’s Javanese grandparents left their country of birth: Suriname. More than 50 years on, the Koudijzer brothers took their grandparents back, seeking out important sites of memory – like the place where Grandma Watinie grew up, or the church where she and Grandpa Iksan were baptised into Christianity. Together, they journeyed to Cola Creek, where the grandparents’ first date took place in the 1960s, and where they got married years later. The family also visited the abandoned refinery of the Mariënburg Sugar Company, where Iksan once came to work as an overseer. Now overgrown by trees and plants, the site was closed shortly after Suriname gained independence in 1975.

The Sugarcoated Venture hones in on spaces where private stories intertwine with narratives of a colonial past. The artists’ grand- parents are themselves the direct descendants of indentured labourers, whilst their familial movements across the world – in this case, from Java to Suriname to the Netherlands – were shaped by broader colonial contexts.

Under colonial rule, daily life for many citizens – whether going to school, work or church – was characterised by innate imbalances of power. As well as revisiting physical spaces and locations, the project also examines photographic territory – be it private family archives, or the official records that sit on the shelves of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. The images that make up The Sugarcoated Venture represent an archive under construction, and an attempt to puzzle together elements of a dislocated history.