Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam Presents "Eye(s) Open": New Perspectives on Colonial Film Heritage
The Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam is set to open a significant new exhibition, "Eye(s) Open – New Perspectives on Colonial Film Heritage," inviting visitors to explore challenging aspects of Dutch colonial history through contemporary art. Opening on April 3, 2026, and running until September 6, 2026, the exhibition features the work of eleven artists who respond to the museum’s extensive collection of colonial-era films.
Rethinking Colonial Narratives Through Film
This exhibition addresses a critical part of the Eye Filmmuseum's archive, which contains approximately 2,000 films from formerly occupied regions in Indonesia and Suriname. These historical documents, often produced from a Eurocentric viewpoint, played a role in shaping and maintaining colonial systems. The participating artists have created ten new works directly engaging with these archival materials. Their interpretations aim to expose colonial structures and practices, challenging the historical role of the camera in perpetuating power dynamics.
The museum emphasizes that the lingering traces of the Dutch colonial past are still evident in everyday life and visual memory. By revisiting these archival images, "Eye(s) Open" provides a platform to critically examine this complex heritage.
A Living Archive and Diverse Interpretations
Eye Filmmuseum considers its vast international film collection a "Living Archive," encouraging new interpretations by artists, thinkers, and researchers. This approach ensures that film history remains dynamic and is continuously shaped by complementary perspectives. Following an open call in 2023, the museum received significant interest, particularly concerning its collection related to Indonesia and Suriname. As a result, Eye decided to support ten projects, offering a diverse range of new perspectives for visitors and fostering dialogue.
Bregtje van der Haak, Director of Eye Filmmuseum, highlighted the importance of continually questioning the collection. She underscored the need to consider historical access to cameras, make visible what might be absent from the archive, and enrich the collection to make shared history more accessible to everyone.
Featured Artists and Key Works
Eleven artists from various countries spent two years researching often problematic archival images for the exhibition. These new works will also become part of the Eye Filmmuseum’s permanent collection.
Exploring Specific Installations
Among the notable contributions, Indonesian artist Riar Rizaldi presents a fresh take on early twentieth-century "phantom ride" films, where a camera mounted on a locomotive recorded passing landscapes. His film installation, Tropenkolder, uses re-enactment and rotating horn loudspeakers to evoke the experiences of Javanese railway workers, whose labor made such films possible yet remained unseen.
Dutch artist Eline Jongsma and American artist Kel O’Neill collaborated on Dominion, an experimental AI-based installation. It imagines unfilmed encounters between Dutch Catholic missionaries and the local population of Flores island.
British artist Jameisha Prescod’s multi-channel film installation, What We Inherit, adopts an essayistic style. It delves into Black Surinamese spiritual responses to illness and examines how colonial ideas about Black bodies influenced healthcare for Afro-Surinamese and Marron communities.
Collaboration and Further Engagement
For "Eye(s) Open," the museum collaborated with guest curator Hicham Khalidi, Director of the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Khalidi notes that the exhibition’s strength lies in the diversity of the participating artists, not only in their backgrounds and disciplines but also in their varied approaches to imbuing existing images with new meaning. He suggests that by challenging the images themselves, the exhibition disrupts the camera's "totalizing lens" and the archive's "false promise of truth," thereby creating opportunities for resistance.
Accompanying Publication and Programs
The exhibition is complemented by a publication that gathers the artists’ perspectives alongside artistic and scholarly contributions, reflecting on the impact of a violent history. This publication also aims to encourage new research and collaborations with Indonesian archives. A series of five "Eye on Art" editions will accompany the exhibition, focusing on the participating artists, their previous works, and themes like provenance, AI, and the collection. More details about the exhibition and related programs can be found on the museum’s website eyefilm.nl/eyesopen.
Visitors interested in exploring this unique exhibition can find more information on Musemap (musemap.art), a platform for culture discovery. To discover more about current showcases at the Eye Filmmuseum and other cultural institutions, browse what's on in the city at /amsterdam/whats-on or explore other fascinating venues like the Eye Filmmuseum at /amsterdam/museum.
