Warsame

Hodan Warsame

Hodan Warsame (she/they) does practice-based experimentation at the RCMC to develop methodologies for the museum to engage and collaborate with historically marginalized groups. In collaboration with makers and practitioners Hodan develops online and offline public programming, such as the podcast Langdradig in connection to the semi-permanent exhibition Our Colonial Inheritance, the Last Room gallery space of the Hair Power exhibition in Wereldmuseum Rotterdam and the 1873 project: an on-going research project on the legacies of indentured labour. The latter two projects she co-developed with curator of South Asia and Globalization, Dr. Priya Swamy. In 2024 they started an ongoing series of somatic and creative workshops for adults aimed at offering visitors opportunities for more holistic engagement with the themes the Wereldmuseum foregrounds, such as racial identity and belonging.

Photo credit: Tengbeh Kamara

Bio

In each project Hodan endeavors to work in a bottom-up way, working together with collaboration partners to platform specific knowledge, lived experiences and perspectives that feel culturally urgent and relevant in the museum. Both the form of these collaborations, as well as their content are methodological investigations in the possibilities of the museum to be a space for repair, reimagining and resourcing. Especially for racialized people whose bodies and material cultures have historically been exploited within and by the infrastructure of European museums. This is part of the RCMC ongoing research into what it takes to create a just and equitable museum.

Hodan’s background is in a wide range of anti-oppression and solidarity building work. She is one of the initiators of Decolonize The Museum, an activist intervention in the Wereldmuseum between 2014 and 2018 that sought to raise awareness about implicit and normalized colonial narratives in exhibitions. She is also a freelance presenter and facilitator of workshops and conversations around contemporary popular culture as well as race and colonialism in the Netherlands.