Blooming Archive

About Blooming Archive

This exhibition features works by seven Dutch and international artists who have researched the IHLIA – LGBTQ collection through their respective practices. Each piece is driven by a different approach of dealing with archival documents: Some of them creatively reframe archival objects to reconstruct and revitalize fragmented histories, forgotten figures, and activist strategies. Others apply montage and collage strategies based on archival holdings, highlighting questions surrounding the ordering and preserving of subaltern heritage.

Together, the works engulf a wide medial range, spanning from textiles and books to sculpture, sound, and video installation. All displays date from the last few years, reflecting the continuously growing relevance of archival art. The exhibition thus offers an insight into contemporary artistic discourses renegotiating art’s access to and participation in LGBTQIA+ history.

What kinds of artistic and historical sources are circulated as evidence for trans and queer lives, and how should we evaluate the personal and creative dimensions of its presentation?

How can archives and art, or a mingled form of artchives, evidence the plentitude of queer and trans lives? Scholars in a wide variety of fields of study (queer, trans, disability, ‘race’/ethnicity), often from outside of the discipline of history, have seized on archival sources to locate ‘those of my kind.’

Artists have created their own records of existence and brought their aesthetic sensibilities to documenting historical and contemporary figures. Many of these efforts seem not so much about an attempted harking back to an affirmative, conflict-free past to claim “we’ve always been here,” but are rather geared towards opening up imaginative histories outside mainstream historiographical models.

The profuseness of artistic and literary experiments with trans and queer archives signals a productive and transformative form of engagement that highlights polyphony and conflict. How can these creative tactics change our understanding of LGBTQI+ history? In what ways might this shift to the creative and the personal seed transformative potential for cultural heritage politics and policy more broadly?

‘My Evidence: Creating LGBTQI+ Art and Archives’ is a conference that will take place Thursday-Friday 3 & 4 October 2024, in Amsterdam at IHLIA LGBT Heritage (day 1) and Mediamatic (day 2).

Visitors can meet the artists and learn more about their respective works. Guest moderators will lead the open discussions of around 20 minutes.

About Blooming Archive

This exhibition features works by seven Dutch and international artists who have researched the IHLIA – LGBTQ collection through their respective practices. Each piece is driven by a different approach of dealing with archival documents: Some of them creatively reframe archival objects to reconstruct and revitalize fragmented histories, forgotten figures, and activist strategies. Others apply montage and collage strategies based on archival holdings, highlighting questions surrounding the ordering and preserving of subaltern heritage.

Together, the works engulf a wide medial range, spanning from textiles and books to sculpture, sound, and video installation. All displays date from the last few years, reflecting the continuously growing relevance of archival art. The exhibition thus offers an insight into contemporary artistic discourses renegotiating art’s access to and participation in LGBTQIA+ history.

We offer two free guided tours of the exhibition (30 min.) with an introduction to the field of contemporary archival art and LGBTQIA+ archives.

About Blooming Archive

This exhibition features works by seven Dutch and international artists who have researched the IHLIA – LGBTQ collection through their respective practices. Each piece is driven by a different approach of dealing with archival documents: Some of them creatively reframe archival objects to reconstruct and revitalize fragmented histories, forgotten figures, and activist strategies. Others apply montage and collage strategies based on archival holdings, highlighting questions surrounding the ordering and preserving of subaltern heritage.

Together, the works engulf a wide medial range, spanning from textiles and books to sculpture, sound, and video installation. All displays date from the last few years, reflecting the continuously growing relevance of archival art. The exhibition thus offers an insight into contemporary artistic discourses renegotiating art’s access to and participation in LGBTQIA+ history.

We offer two free guided tours of the exhibition (30 min.) with an introduction to the field of contemporary archival art and LGBTQIA+ archives.

About Blooming Archive

This exhibition features works by seven Dutch and international artists who have researched the IHLIA – LGBTQ collection through their respective practices. Each piece is driven by a different approach of dealing with archival documents: Some of them creatively reframe archival objects to reconstruct and revitalize fragmented histories, forgotten figures, and activist strategies. Others apply montage and collage strategies based on archival holdings, highlighting questions surrounding the ordering and preserving of subaltern heritage.

Together, the works engulf a wide medial range, spanning from textiles and books to sculpture, sound, and video installation. All displays date from the last few years, reflecting the continuously growing relevance of archival art. The exhibition thus offers an insight into contemporary artistic discourses renegotiating art’s access to and participation in LGBTQIA+ history.

Visitors can meet the artists and learn more about their respective works. Guest moderators will lead the open discussions of around 20 minutes.

About Blooming Archive

This exhibition features works by seven Dutch and international artists who have researched the IHLIA – LGBTQ collection through their respective practices. Each piece is driven by a different approach of dealing with archival documents: Some of them creatively reframe archival objects to reconstruct and revitalize fragmented histories, forgotten figures, and activist strategies. Others apply montage and collage strategies based on archival holdings, highlighting questions surrounding the ordering and preserving of subaltern heritage.

Together, the works engulf a wide medial range, spanning from textiles and books to sculpture, sound, and video installation. All displays date from the last few years, reflecting the continuously growing relevance of archival art. The exhibition thus offers an insight into contemporary artistic discourses renegotiating art’s access to and participation in LGBTQIA+ history.

How do we care for each other in our living, learning and working lives? The manual Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care calls for an ethics of care and attentiveness to one another, re-imagines the making and the use of infrastructures, and situates care within a genealogy of artistic and social practice.

>Promiscuous Infrastructures brings together more than twenty contributors—art and social practitioners, researchers, and educators—including the twelve core members of the Promiscuous Care Study Group, who have been researching and writing about caring infrastructures and promiscuous care for several years. This project takes seriously the urgent need to imagine diverse infrastructures of care at every scale of planetary existence. The resulting interdisciplinary publication comprises essays, visual schematics and scores, personal letters, recipes, and conversations, which emerge from the work of the study group, situated around the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

About Blooming Archive

This exhibition features works by seven Dutch and international artists who have researched the IHLIA – LGBTQ collection through their respective practices. Each piece is driven by a different approach of dealing with archival documents: Some of them creatively reframe archival objects to reconstruct and revitalize fragmented histories, forgotten figures, and activist strategies. Others apply montage and collage strategies based on archival holdings, highlighting questions surrounding the ordering and preserving of subaltern heritage.

Together, the works engulf a wide medial range, spanning from textiles and books to sculpture, sound, and video installation. All displays date from the last few years, reflecting the continuously growing relevance of archival art. The exhibition thus offers an insight into contemporary artistic discourses renegotiating art’s access to and participation in LGBTQIA+ history.

Visitors can meet the artists and learn more about their respective works. Guest moderators will lead the open discussions of around 20 minutes.

About Blooming Archive

This exhibition features works by seven Dutch and international artists who have researched the IHLIA – LGBTQ collection through their respective practices. Each piece is driven by a different approach of dealing with archival documents: Some of them creatively reframe archival objects to reconstruct and revitalize fragmented histories, forgotten figures, and activist strategies. Others apply montage and collage strategies based on archival holdings, highlighting questions surrounding the ordering and preserving of subaltern heritage.

Together, the works engulf a wide medial range, spanning from textiles and books to sculpture, sound, and video installation. All displays date from the last few years, reflecting the continuously growing relevance of archival art. The exhibition thus offers an insight into contemporary artistic discourses renegotiating art’s access to and participation in LGBTQIA+ history.