From the summer of 2019 the Kunsthal Rotterdam will present the impressive retrospective exhibition ‘Joana Vasconcelos. I’m Your Mirror’, featuring the work of the famous Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos (1971). In an activist and feminist way, and with a profound respect for Portuguese culture and traditions, she gives reality her own personal twist. Vasconcelos is known for her sharp sense of proportions, masterly use of colour and unusual choice of materials, like household appliances, wall tiles, textiles, medicines, urinals, pans and plastic cutlery.
The exhibition ‘A Journey to the Homeland’ by the South African photographer Katharine Cooper (1978, Grahamstown) presents a probing portrait of white Africans. Major political events, such as the collapse of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994 and the expulsion of white farmers from their houses in Zimbabwe in 2000, significantly changed the position of these Africans. Although many of them managed to secure a certain future for themselves after these changes, others were not so lucky. In 2013, Cooper returned for a journey through the countries of her childhood, South Africa and Zimbabwe. In a respectful way, she captured members of the white minority that she used to belong to herself.
The Kunsthal Rotterdam has already organised All you can Art with David Bade and Tirzo Martha, the founders of the Instituto Buena Bista (IBB) Curaçao, and their team for three years in succession. All you can Art is a studio, exhibition and Summer School all in one, in which everyone – with no exception – has the opportunity of collaborating, making art, learning and discovering.