PEOPLE MADE OF STORIES

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Exhibition at Framer Framed Amsterdam, 2024-2025

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The Anarchist Citizenship is a research project initiated by curator & researcher Amal Alhaag and Nadine Stijns in 2016. The Anarchist Citizenship examines how storytelling, visual culture, architecture and social life (re)shape citizenship in Somaliland, the Somali region and its diaspora.

The Anarchist Citizenship centers the lived experiences of youth and women, focusing on how they nurture and shape societies.

How can we avoid, refuse, or obscure the colonial gaze and create images challenging the status quo? What power dynamics are at play when capturing an image, and what does it take to create images that celebrate the multiplicity of identities and experiences that sustain cultures in times of ongoing crises? 

These sets of questions animate The Anarchist Citizenship by exploring the possibilities of visual narratives, imagination and self-determination. The Anarchist Citizenship project is informed by both local and diasporic visual culture and offers an alternative approach to understanding, broadcasting to, as well as engaging with the world. 

By placing the agency of the people of Somali(land) at the centre of the narrative, it attempts to challenge the Eurocentric, (neo)colonial and imperialist hierarchies of who gets to document, write, and think about whom. Each image is carefully constructed without the promise of false representation and created in close collaboration with people deciding on their poses, locations, backgrounds, clothing and style. People we photograph are never nameless and our collaborators get a share when the work is sold.

Scenography: Rashid Ali

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Related works

The Anarchist Citizenship

Ode to Youthful Daredevils

Baati as Archive

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