Nina bell F. House Museum

28 May–26 November 2023 / Casco HQ 
Opening hours: every Tuesday and Wednesday from 12:00–18:00. Otherwise, by appointment (please email nina@casco.art).
In company of Annette Krauss, Christian Nyampeta, David Bennewith, Donghwan Kam, Jazael Olguín Zapata, Jorinde Seydel, Katayoon Barzegar, Michael Klinkenberg, Nuraini Juliastuti, Seo Kyung Kim, Sophia Park, Staci Bu Shea, Ying Que, Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, and many more to come.
​​Opening 27 May 2023, 15:00–18:00. With words by Aline Hernandez, Binna Choi, Donghwan Kam, Marianna Takou, Nuraini Juliastuti, and Ying Que, at 16:00.

Moira Exporiment location: 4 June–30 July 2023. Opening 4 June 2023, 13:00–18:00. With words by Binna Choi, Marianna Takou, and Ying Que at 15:00. Opening hours: Friday–Sunday, 13:00–18:00. Otherwise by appointment (please email nina@casco.art).

The program of conversations and activities is updated here on the website.


Welcome to Nina bell F. House Museum!

Not only unveiling the archives of Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, but also cohabiting with them, Nina bell F. House Museum is an exhibition that plays with the idea of archiving entanglements and relations. The setting is our office gallery transformed, for the occasion, into a consultation site for the visitors to encounter, browse, listen to, and reproduce materials telling the stories of collaboration that live through Casco Art Institute’s collections. With this, the exhibition aims to practice an understanding of archiving as a verb, collaborative and relational, while serving and celebrating the ecosystem(s) growing in and out of the institution–namely the spirit of Nina bell F.  

But who’s Nina bell F.? 
The figure was conceived around 2016 by (ex-)workers, artists, and cultural practitioners at Casco Art Institute out of a shared concern about what it means to care for and maintain the ongoing practice of commoning and unlearning with art beyond oppressive institutional boundaries and habits. Their/her name conjures up the artistic, Black, feminist, and political engagements of Nina Simone, bell hooks, and Silvia Federici. As Nina continues to live on, the practices of many others are called upon, keeping her/them as a collective figuration that transcends individual personhood and institution, as well as the ordinary divisions of artwork, labor, and life.

The House Museum collects and shares ephemera, left-over objects, notes, snapshots, among other (accidental yet telling) things unearthed from the archives of Casco Art Institute’s exhibitions, projects, and collaborations, each of which tells the story of Nina. It foregrounds the non-conventional practices of archiving at the heart of small institutions which often remain invisible, undervalued, and overlooked due to the culture of visibility and the accelerative and extractive modus operandi prevailing in our time. Simultaneously, the House Museum works at odds with other institutionalized archival practices that tend to hoard, guard, and stall archives by insisting on forms of openness, liveliness, and slowness where the collection is made accessible for per/use, contribution, co-creation, exchange, and circulation over time. For the exhibition, a series of small “fermentation houses” as the House Museum’s architecture provided by Amsterdam-based artist Donghwan Kam serve to nurture this process. They indicate that the dwelling place of Nina exists beyond the visible and physical realm while sheltering and making a new alchemy to be collectively tasted.

  

Highlights in the context of Nina bell F. House Museum

On the second floor of Casco Art Institute (through 12 July)
On the second floor materials made from the archives of Casco Art Institute that offer some key premises and questions relating to Unlearning Center are presented. Unlearning Center is a new educational initiative for unlearning institutional habits for commoning practice by Casco which we plan to launch in spring 2024. The initiative stems from the 2014–2018 collaborative project Site for Unlearning (Art Organization) developed by artist Annette Krauss and the Casco team. The presentation also features Replica (2022), an installation by Utrecht-based Iranian artist Katayoon Barzegar, who also has been working on re-organizing our library. It comprises out of date printed matters including passports, newspapers, and magazines in the form of masks that one can wear. These materials have been taken out of the artist’s storage and were adapted for this occasion.

At Moira Exporiment, Wolvenstraat 10, Utrecht (through 30 July)
Moira reactivates Christian Nyampeta’s Scenes from the Revolution (2020), which Casco Art Institute has taken care of in our storage since 2020. The work rematerializes the drawings of the lino prints by the participants of People’s Art School (1983–1986) in Gwangju, South Korea (as archived in the form of publication). It comprises linoleum carvings, prints, and display structures in variable dimensions for visitors to print and take away. This artwork was created for Gwangju Lessons, an exhibition project curated by Casco director, Binna Choi, commissioned by and presented at Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne and subsequently at the Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, as part of the MaytoDay, a project commemorating the 1980 democratic uprising in Gwangju and reflecting on its legacy. 

Moira Exporiment is part of the foundation Moira and the co-housing building initiated through squatting in 1983 and legalized in 1990, the same year that Casco Art Institute was established. The space is run by a community of activists, artists, and collectives that programs activities and events.

In the office gallery
The exhibition’s main space allows listening to the archival contributions by close collaborators who gather around Nina bell F. her/their spirit. These spoken notes highlight personal experiences aligning with selected boxes in Casco Art Institute’s vast archive. Listen to them below and find their transcripts here.

Colophon:

This iteration of Nina bell F. House Museum is curated and produced by Binna Choi, Aline Hernández and Marianna Takou and supported by Luke Cohlen for communication; Erik Uitenbogaard for financial administration; Luke Cohlen and Leana Boven for translation; and Amaia Yoller for transcription

Extended team:
Michael Klinkenberg, exhibition construction
Riet Wijnen and Falke Pisano, office setting in process
David Bennewith (colophon.info), visual communication
Seokyung Kim, Nina bell F. visual identity
Chun Yao Lin, photography
Parvaneh Karimi, food
Tijmen Lohmeijer, audio editing
Karen Vantvelt, Hohn Guan, diagram design and production
Katayoon Barzegar, Martha Miari, Francisco Baquerizo Racines, Maria Sujecka, and Yuen Ming Lo, exhibition buildup and hosting

Our gratitude to Ying Que and the Moira Exporiment team for facilitating the satellite location

Made possible with the fund from City Council of Utrecht and DOEN Foundation through Arts Collaboratory

Further inquiry: if you are interested in getting to know more and/or supporting Nina bell F. House Museum, please contact: nina@casco.art

This activity is part of:

The museum embodies the practices of many artists, practitioners and organizations around the world, as found through yet beyond the archives of Casco

Explore more activities

Name Surname

Title

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.

External link