Join us at The Hmm @ No Limits! Art Castle, where we’ll be joined by six artists, researchers, and makers who’ll take us through their intersections and interactions with internet culture.
This event is connected to Boujloud Beats: Rhythms of Plurality, the group exhibition now on view at No Limits! Art Castle, in which artists explore the boundaries of art and identity, inspired by the Moroccan Boujloud ritual. The title Boujloud Beats: Rhythms of Plurality refers to the way people constantly shift between different layers of their personality, and how these layers sometimes come together or clash. The identities of the artists and how they navigate through society, expressing themselves in various forms, are just as important as the artworks themselves. Just as the Boujloud ritual breaks aesthetic conventions, the exhibition does so as well by celebrating plural identities and self-expression.
We’re excited to have Simomo Bouj, curator of Boujloud Beats: Rhythms of Plurality, and artist Rex Collins helping us put together a powerful program for this night.
♿️ Accessibility Note
During the event we can provide live closed captioning for those with hearing impairment. Please reach out to us if you are joining on-site and have this access need, so we can reserve a seat for you within view of the screen with captions. If you are joining online via our livestream, live captioning will be available as one of the streaming modes.
Abu Shhab is a show girl, online troll, conceptual performer, and an audio/visual artist working with vanity as a research space in identity politics. A novelist without novels, they create and perform an excessive amount of alter egos, and characters with many different story arcs and urgencies—writing their own narratives in various contexts of nightlife, online platforms, museums, clubs, and contemporary art spaces. They’ll be joining us to talk about their latest framework: troll debates as a medium of research on social media platforms to engage with harmful political rhetorics, opposing them with vulgar satire. Link
Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi
Va-Bene (aka crazinisT artisT) is a trans woman who lives in Kumasi, Ghana and works internationally as a multidisciplinary “artivist”, curator, philanthropist, artvangelist, and a mentor across several countries. As a performer and installation artist, crazinisT investigates gender stereotypes, prejudices, queerness, identity politics and conflicts, sexual stigma, and their consequences for marginalised groups and individuals. Through rituals and a gender-fluid persona, she employs her own body as a thought-provoking tool in her work. She will be talking about the censorship of artivists and queer voices online. Link
Rex Collins
Rex Collins is an artist currently based in Amsterdam. Their artistic practice, using installation, image, performance, and text, centers around in-betweenness and intimacy through a critical queer/trans lens. Their work incorporates elements of drag, pop culture, and unconventional materials. Rex directs the audience’s attention to often overlooked experiences of trans fantasy. During the event, they’ll talk about sexting as a kind of intimate literacy that collapses into feelings and touch, crossing the digital and pulling the body into its virtual becoming. Link
Eleni Maragkou
Eleni Maragkou is an Amsterdam-based jack-of-all-trades, master of some. She holds a research master’s in media studies and thinks and writes about the internet, and the ordinary ways in which humans produce meaning. Eleni doesn’t dream of labour, but in her waking hours keeps her mind busy with writing, editorial work, comms girlbossing, media research, occasional public speaking, and most cringe of all, DJing. She’ll be joining us to talk about the oppositional aesthetics of girlhood, the emergent (wo)man-o-sphere, and embracing failure. Link
Lucas Lugarinho
Lucas works with video games and painting, sampling disparate media ecosystems into counter-colonial narratives that explore what political alliances emerge from encountering otherness. For this event he will present a brief anthology of political assassinations in video games and interactive media.
WeirDo
Omar Sherif, aka WeirDo, was born in Egypt in 2000. He was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy at the age of 9 and began using a wheelchair 2 years after. Through his art, WeirDo continues to defy expectations and showcase his creativity and resilience. In his presentation WeirDo will talk about his finsta, the Opium aesthetic and how it influenced his work, and the time he faked his death on Aprils Fools’.
Razeen
To close off our last hybrid event of the year, we’ve prepared a special closing act together with our guest curators. As a Sudanese, raised in The Netherlands, in his art Razeen walks on the thin line between his Afro-Arabic roots & his Western pop culture influences. With his introspective yet playful sense of self you can expect a dynamic, energetic yet vulnerable performance.
Get ready for some Arabic/English dance music!
