Amal Alhaag Amal Alhaag
Amal Alhaag is an Amsterdam-based curator, researcher and co-initiator/facilitator of several initiatives, including Metro54, a platform for experimental sonic, dialogic and visual culture and the Side Room (2013-2016), a room for eccentric practices and people together with dear friend and artist Maria Guggenbichler. Amal develops ongoing experimental and collaborative research practice, public programs and projects on global spatial politics, archives, colonialism, counter-culture, oral histories and popular culture.
Her projects and collaborations with people, collectives initiatives and institutions invite, stage, question and play with ‘uncomfortable’ issues that riddle, rewrite, remix, share and compose narratives in impermanent settings. Amal is currently part of the curatorial team of the quadrennial sonsbeek2020-2024 in Arnhem, Netherlands; senior research & public programmer at the Research Center for Material Culture, Netherlands and curatorial and research fellow at Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar.
Since 2015, Amal has developed an ongoing collaboration with Framed Framed and (befriended) artists, organisers, curators/cultural producers, academics, activists and organisers on programs that range from gatherings to group shows, film screenings and parties. In collaboration with artist and curator Barby Asante, Amal Alhaag co-initiated the ongoing collaborative project Diasporic Self: Black Togetherness as Lingua Franca (2019/2019) at Framer Framed in Amsterdam and at 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning in London. As part of the Metro54 team, she worked together with curator Rita Ouédraogo on A Funeral for Street Culture (2021), a multidisciplinary take-over at Framer Framed in Amsterdam.
Presented at Framer Framed from 27 October 2024 to 26 January 2025, the exhibition The Anarchist Citizenship: People Made of Stories examines how storytelling, visual culture, architecture and social life (re)shape citizenship in Somaliland, the Somali region and its diaspora. It is the result of a collaborative research project initiated by Amal Alhaag and Nadine Stijns, in collaboration with Mustafa Saeed and various other artists, thinkers, architects, and activists based in Somaliland/Somalia and its diasporas.
- ArtConnect - Discomfort as (curatorial) strategy: A Funeral for Street Culture
- sonsbeek20→24
- Web page of Metro54
- Dipsaus - Amal Alhaag over 'Diasporic Self, Black Togetherness'
- Metropolis M - Amal Alhaag about Diasporic Self at Framer Framed
- Metropolis M - Black Art Matters
- TENT, Rotterdam - BLUEPRINT: Whose urban appropriation is this?
Links
Exhibitions
Exhibition: The Anarchist Citizenship – People Made of Stories
Exhibition on how storytelling and visual culture (re)shape citizenship in Somaliland, the Somali region and its diaspora
Project: A Funeral for Street Culture
A group project by Metro54 and Rita Ouédraogo hosted by Framer Framed
Exhibition: Diasporic Self - Black Togetherness as Lingua Franca
A project initiated by Amal Alhaag and Barby Asante
Exhibition: El Órgano Oriental
Een presentatie met werk van Antonio Jose Guzman en een live interactief programma, onder de titel Water No Get Enemy, samengesteld door Amal Alhaag
Agenda
Guided Tour – The Anarchist Citizenship: People Made of Stories
Framer Framed invites you to join a guided tour of the exhibition The Anarchist Citizenship: People Made of Stories
Opening The Anarchist Citizenship: People Made of Stories
Opening of the exhibition which examines how storytelling, visual culture, architecture and social life (re)shape citizenship in Somaliland, the Somali region and its diaspora
Launch: Errant Journal #3, DISCOMFORT
Errant Journal is a concept by Irene de Craen, realised in collaboration with Framer Framed
Finale Diasporic Self: Black Love Letters & Manifestos
An event celebrating the final day of Diasporic Self: Black Togetherness as Lingua Franca.
Diasporic Self: Lexicon of Black Poetics
This event offers space for (performative) readings that peel away, show, uncover the layers and complexities of black poetics of the everyday.
Diasporic Self: Caring as Lingua Franca - Fiction & Myths of Black Womxnhood
An evening programme i.c.w. Dipsaus podcast.
Citizenship & Cultural Production #1, Co-creation and the Commons
The first session as part of public programme Broadcasting from Babylon
Educational series: Broadcasting from Babylon
On intersectional feminist, queer, and anti-colonial embodied, listening and sounding practices.
Opening: Exhibition Diasporic Self: Black Togetherness as Lingua Franca
A project by Amal Alhaag and Barby Asante.
Diasporic Self II: Dancing as lingua franca (a gathering in progress)
An event in light of Amsterdam Art Weekend 2018, with Hannah Catherine Jones, Ogutu Muraya, Amal Alhaag and Barby Asante.
Pedagogies of Violence, Pedagogies of Care
Part of 'Moving Together: Activism, Art and Education - A Week with Angela Davis'. Hosted by Amal Alhaag & Maria Guggenbichler.
Pedagogies of the Opaque (I): Black Schools: Learning for and by Black Futures
The first gathering in a series of public research events for, with and about ex-centric cultural, communal and collective practices and thinking.
Symposium: Declassified - How to Un/Engender the Ethnographic Object?
On the (historical) construction of gender and sexuality within the ethnographic collecting practices of museums.
Filthy Mouth, Dirty Politics #2
An 'anti-conference conference', experimenting with transgressive speech acts, filthy, vulgar language, radical feminism and digital (non) spaces.
Framer Framed at Art Rotterdam 2016
As part of the Intersections area, a stage for young talent in contemporary art.
Mining, Memories and the Body: An evening with a.o. Melanie Bonajo
Addressing the politics and poetics of changing industries, such as mining.
Diasporic self: sound as lingua franca
The closing event to the exhibition 'Ancestral Blues'.
In Dialogue II: Questioning the explorer
With a historical re-enactment by performing artist Xenson Znja.
In Dialogue I: Deciphering and Reclaiming Histories
Artist talk with collaborating artists Papa Shabani and Xenson Znja.
Filthy Mouth - Dirty Politics
Experimental conference on the relationship between vulgar language, radical feminism.
VENUS: the anti-hero hero
An interactive programme that explores the historically violent imageries surrounding Venus.
Perspectives
Public encounters in the context of the exhibition Embodied Spaces.
Side-expo: 'Venus' masks by Shertise Solano & Ronald de Graaff
By Shertise Solano & Ronald de Graaff. In addition to the 'Embodied Spaces' exhibition.
Talkshow De Dissident/Mag Het Licht Aan festival
Talkshow in de context of the exhibition 'Embodied Spaces' with Amal Alhaag, Molemo Moiloa, Evan Ifekoya, Arsham Parsi and CB Berghouwer.
Magazine
Shared Heritage / Gentrification /
Shared Heritage / Colonial history / Contested Heritage /
Podcast Series: Black Togetherness
/ Amsterdam Oost / Community & Learning /
Digital Archive: A Funeral for Street Culture
/
The compelling oil pastel portraits of Kenneth Aidoo
Museology /
Losgezongen van tijd en ruimte, over het project Diasporic Self
Diaspora /
Diasporic Self: Black Togetherness as Lingua Franca - by Olave Nduwanje
Collection development / Museology / Queer /
Report: How to Un/Engender the Ethnographic Object?
Politics and technology /