“I founded ‘de Vluchtmaat’ 3 years ago. I recently started coordinating the programming at the Vluchtmaat. De Vluchtmaat offers a temporary home to 40 refugees in limbo and rents out workingspaces to artists, designers, non-profit organizations and small entrepeneurs. The rent they pay covers all monthly fixed costs like gas, water and electricity. So, we created a shelter for 40 people, that otherwise would be on the street, that doesn’t cost anything to neither the owner of the building or the municipality. Besides de Vluchtmaat functions as a cultural hub in which collaborations between renters and residents are happening. http://vluchtmaat.nl/
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Next to that I recently restarted my individual artistic practice again after leaving ‘Here to Support’. Here to Support is a non-profit organization I founded in 2013. Here to Support engages in projects initiated by a group of artists and theorists in close cooperation with refugees in limbo. Together they aim to shape partnerships based on equality within a society characterized by fundamental inequalities. Here to Support does not focus on providing humanitarian assistance, but it strives for emancipation of undocumented migrants. To make them seen, heard and essentially, to put them in charge of their own lives again. Here to Support initiates educational and cultural projects that enable refugees in limbo to express and develop themselves. http://heretosupport.nl/ Two times I have been at Capacete for a residency period to do research and produce work. This was in 2010 and 2012. Later on I visited Capacete again because I fell in love with Rio de Janeiro and with Johnson Beauge, to whom I am now married. My stay in Rio was life changing in so many aspects, that I don’t even know where to start. It was magical but painful, relaxed but intense, inspiring but hard to get things done. It was it all. A place to go back to. Again and again.”
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