Sonsbeek 2021-2024 / Force times distance on labour and its sonic ecologies
International Art Exhibition / Arnhem – The Netherlands
Execution year; 2021
Curatorial team; Bonaventure Ndikung / Antonia Alampi / Aude Christel Mgba / Amal Alhaag / Zippora Elders
With its ears on the ground, sonsbeek20 24 attempts to listen to local and global shifts in sociopolitics, economy,
health, arts, as well as science, ecology and technology. Central to this long term artistic project that stretches to 2024
are deliberations on emotional and physical labour conditions, forces that reflect disproportionate power gradients akin
to our entangled colonial relationships, non-linear understandings of the notion of time, and the collapsing of distances
between the physical and psychological here and there. sonsbeek20 24 will act as a choreography of sonic move-
ments, engaging in an expanded and augmented musicality that invites and encourages different modes of listening
that want to make visible the unseen and unheard, that recovers, restitutes and repairs the still segregative conditions
under which we live, between visible and invisible workers, bodies and lands.
sonsbeek20 24 narrates, touches, falls into and wrestles with the ways time, force and distance collapse into each other,
transform and loop struggles, calculus of working and resting, living and dying in a laborious, shifting world. In the upcoming years our various programmes, collaborations, research, clashes and conversations represent a cacophony of beings, histo-
riographies, stories and relationships that embody new/alternative horizons for our everyday reality.”—amal alhaag, co-curator sonsbeek20 24.
With more than 37 artists and 39 artworks in 13 different locations, sonsbeek20 24 expands its original format, tradi-
tionally focused on presenting works in Arnhem’s Park sonsbeek. The elasticity of sonsbeek’s format is also explored in
a temporal sense, with an eye on decelerating the traditional artistic practice surrounding large-scale art exhibitions, in
order to achieve a long-term reciprocal relation between and dedication to artists, institutions, places, and audiences.
The idea of an extended timeframe and deceleration is reflected in a public programme that kicks off during the opening
with an itinerary that sets out to establish conversations with different audiences and connects the topic of labour
and sonicity to different lived realities in both minor and major keys.
Participating artists Park Sonsbeek; Julieta Aranda, Leo Asemota, Sam Auinger, stanley brouwn, Black Archives, Cheick Diallo, Ndidi Dike, Justine Gaga, Ellen Gallagher, Antonio Guzman in collaboration with Iva Jankovic, Louis Henderson and João Polido Gomez, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Yinka Ilori, Anne Duk-Hee Jordan, Mae-Ling Lokko and Gustavo Crembil, Ibrahim Mahama, Oscar Murillo, Hira Nabi, Olu Oguibe, Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Erika Hoch, Laure Prouvost, Raumlabor, Willem de Rooij, Nader Mohamed Saadallah, Mithu Sen, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Libita Sibungu, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Jennifer Tee, Sunette L. Viljoen, Omer Wasim, Werker Collective, and Alida Ymele, as well as historical positions by stanley brouwn, Sedje Hémon, Imran Mir and Abdias do Nascimento.