The Throes / De Naweeën: Evoking Earth’s Body public programs

Save the date for our upcoming public programs, and sign up via this link for one or both events.

Moaning Mourning Moaning Mourning: A Sonic Ritual on Grief and Ancestral Presence with Chimira Natanna

Date: Sunday 18 January 2026

Dinner: 17.30–18.30

Performance Along the Passage 18.30–18.50

Workshop: 19.00–20.30

The newly developed performance Along the Passage, performed by Serah Doku Meijboom and Maïté Egeolu, retells the myth of the Ibeyi twins: one moving through hurdles on earth, while the other has passed into the realm of spirit. Although residing in different realms, they remain tethered to one another, leading to a haunting, evolving connection between these two realms. Adejumo asks us: what other-worlds can we access through the stories and myths that have been passed down to us?

Moaning Mourning Moaning Mourning: A Sonic Ritual on Grief and Ancestral Presence is an immersive, music-led space exploring grief, duality, and ancestral presence, guided by Chimira Natanna. The workshop centers music as a container for grief and knowledge, with improvisation and embodied response as core elements.Through meditative guidance, participants engage with the sound piece FREE MA SISTAHS IN CAGES, and collective reflection and grounding exercises help us attune to dualities and ancestral presence.

Filmstill by Ciska Meister

Myths & Transformation with Ernestine Comvalius

Date: Thursday 22 January 2026

Dinner: 17.30–18.30

Workshop: 18.30–20.30

In this reading group and writing workshop Myths & Transformation, we explore how transformations—both physical and spiritual—shape the narrative structures of West African myths and oral traditions.

Special attention will be given to the symbolic and narrative role of animals within these traditions. In the 16 Great Poems of Ifá, animals are not merely part of the natural world, but active carriers of wisdom, moral instruction, and cosmological knowledge. Their bodies, behaviours, and transformations often mirror human dilemmas: the trickster’s cunning, the vulture’s endurance, the leopard’s blend of grace and danger. By examining how these animal figures function as metaphors for emotional, ethical, or spiritual states, we gain new tools to write our own.

Through collective reading and discussion, followed by practical writing exercises, we will work with animal symbolism, key narrative turning points, and the transformative journeys of deities and orishas. Together, we explore how myth shows us the ways our ancestors navigated the world, and how our own stories might act as vessels for the future.

Photography by Justin Ugochukwu

These gatherings are part of the public programming of the exhibition The Throes / De Naweeën: Evoking Earth’s Body by Pelumi Adejumo, curated by Yusser al Obaidi and Leana Boven as part of the Spiritual Disobedience exhibition series at Gemaal op Zuid.

bio

Pelumi Adejumo is schrijver en multidisciplinair maker. Ze studeerde Creative Writing aan ArtEZ en behaalde haar master Fine Art aan het Dutch Art Institute. In 2023 ontving ze de Frans Vogel Poëzieprijs voor haar meertalige werk en in 2020 werd ze door NRC geselecteerd als een van de meest veelbelovende kunstenaars in de Lage Landen.

Haar praktijk verkent de relaties tussen meertaligheid, het lichaam, mythologie en collectief geheugen, vaak via geluid, performance en tekst.

Ze was vertaler van de multimediale voorstelling Minor Music at the End of the World, geschreven door Saidiya Hartman en geregisseerd door Sarah Benson, die in 2025 in première ging bij Internationaal Theater Amsterdam in opdracht van de Hartwig Art Foundation. In 2025/2026 is ze een van de deelnemers aan de MacDowell Fellowship in New Hampshire.

Adejumo publiceert en treedt op in binnen- en buitenland. Haar werk was onder meer te zien in De Gids, De Groene Amsterdammer, Point de Chute, Furious Flower IV, Museum Arnhem, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, A Tale of A Tub en Savvy Contemporary. Daarnaast werkte ze als scriptiebegeleider bij de Sandberg Master BlackerBlackness Studies en is ze actief als programmeur en vertaler bij het internationale literatuurfestival Read My World.