In Staying with the Trouble, Donna Haraway proposes that it matters what thoughts think thoughts, what worlds world worlds, and therefore also what knots knot knots. We read What Knots Knot Knots as a string-figuring of entangled, mutually implicating histories that shape the northern provinces of the Netherlands. What Knots Knot Knots reads archives, landscapes and collective memories as interconnected knots: overlapping layers of colonial infrastructures, knowledge systems, migration histories and institutional practices that continue to structure the present.

What Knots Knot Knots is a site responsive exhibition that stretches across the northern provinces of the Netherlands hosted by four cultural institution. In Groningen at the Groningen Museum, the focus lies on archives, knowledge production and systems of representation; in Friesland at Kunstinitiatief, on maritime networks and institutional memory; and in Drenthe at Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork, on migration histories and the social and spatial afterlives of colonial structures.

Kunstinitiatief VHDG, Leeuwarden - opening 26 juni, artist talk 27 juni

Presenting artists: Cihad Caner, Thato Toeba & Jori(k) A. Galama

Herinneringscentrum Westerbork - opening 4 juli

Presenting Artists: Koos Breukel & Ana Guedes

Groninger Museum, locatie Wall House opening 5 juli

Presenting Artists: Ofri Cnaani & Yeb Wiersma

Noorderlicht Foundation- finissage 29 & 30 augustus

Presenting Artist: Faisel Saro

Curators: Musoke Nalwoga & Roosje Klap (with Help from Koen Bartijn for the Kunstintiatif VHDG leg of the multi-site project)

Collaborating Institutions

CAMPIS, Fries Museum, Groninger Archieven, Groninger Museum, Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork, Noorderlicht, Universiteitsmuseum Groningen, VHDG.