Naima Hassan

The RCMC is extremely honoured to welcome Naima Hassan, who will engage in a research project titled Networks of Care and Refusal: Mapping Diasporic Presences at the RCMC.

TheMuseumsLab is a knowledge-exchange programme for joint learning and sharing between and among African and European museums. The project is financed by the German Federal Foreign Office and supported by the German Minister of State for Culture and the Media as well as the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Photo credit:

Collection item: 7249-1 A collective project. Ontwerp & Productie: Werkgroep Het Bijlmer Inspiratie Huis Voorzitter: Helen Burleson Esajas & leden: Astrid Jibodh, Juliette Peroti & Lizette Pinas; Design hoofddoek: Earl Peroti: Designed the depicted angisa (Surinamese headcloth) in 2018 to commemorate the fiftieth year anniversary of the Amsterdam neighbourhood of the Bijlmer, in the South East of the city. Samenwerkende organisaties:
Stichting 50 jar Bijlmer & Stichting Beheer het Groeiend Monument https://collectie.wereldculturen.nl/#/query/dbff8c22-79c2-4487-a05d-5c9fab79b369

Research Project | Networks of Care and Refusal: Mapping ‘Diasporic’ Presences at the RCMC

At the RCMC, Naima hopes to map local diaspora networks that have informed the institute’s decolonial culture. Naima will research and reactivate RCMC’s 50 Years Bijlmer programme—organised across 2018 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Bijlmer neighbourhood of Amsterdam. Drawing on AbdouMalique Simone's People as Infrastructure paper (2004) and Clémentine Deliss’s Metabolic Museum (2020), she will delve into institutional archives and initiate conversations in an attempt to map the situated knowledge emerging from Bijlmer communities, along with the political, artistic, and social movements which have emerged from it. Positioning herself as a critical guest and interlocuter, Naima aims to form an embodied understanding of diaspora networks working with Dutch museums. In return, she offers an institutional mirror to the RCMC.

Biography

Naima Hassan is a curator, museum researcher and DAAD Museums Lab Fellow. She is currently working with 100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object along with Yinka Shonibare Foundation, where she is cataloguing a library collection of African art and anthropology for their project space in Lagos, Nigeria. Her research interests include cultural memory, affect, and embodiment, with a focus on African material culture held in ethnographic museums. New areas of her research explore the tensions between colonialism and natural history, with attention to ethnobotany and decolonial ecology. She has given talks and supported conferences in various locations, including Iniva, Paris Peace Forum, Northampton University, British Institute in Eastern Africa and National Maritime Museum. She was Assistant Curator for Timespan Museum’s exhibition No Colour Bar: Highland Remix: Clearances to Colonialism and has studied at University of Oxford, and Goldsmiths, University of London. Her upcoming exhibition, Memory Materials takes place 19 August – 24 September 2022 at Two Queens, Leicester.

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