Dear friends, colleagues, family and supporters,
Last September IBB started her orientation course for young talents for the fours time since 2006. With 11 marvelous young talents and 12 students staying from last year, we currently have the biggest group ever. Nonetheless the group blended very well over the last few months, as they always do, and since our last exciting projects the team is closer than ever. If you are able and curious to see what these last months have brought us, we all welcome you to come and take a look at IBB during weekdays from 2:00 to 6:00 pm. During the holidays we will be taking some time off.
Next to our – pride and joy – students from the orientation course, you can also meet and see the work of our current IBB residents: from the Netherlands Marielle Videler (AiR residency Fonds BKVB) and Otobong Nkanga from Belgium/Nigeria (IPS residency Mondriaan Foundation). Otobong Nkanga we are very proud we could recently temporarily ‘snatch’ her away from a very busy schedule as a visual artist and performer and also visual arts teacher at the Amsterdam Rietveld Academy. Otobong has come to do a workshop with our IBB ‘new league’ and at the same time produce an autonomous work. Later on in this newsletter you can read more about her work.


Dutch Artist in residence: Marielle Videler
In close cooperation with the Dutch BKVB Fund visual Artist Marielle Videler was invited into our residency program from October 2010 to January 2011.
Mariëlle Videler is a visual artist who works and lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and also regularly creates work on location. In 2003 she graduated from the fine art department of the Sandberg Institute (MFA) in Amsterdam; before that she studied at the textile department at the Academy for Visual Art in Tilburg.

Marielle’s work has been shown in galleries, museums, art-initiatives and festivals throughout the Netherlands, Europe and recently also in China, Turkey and Brazil. In 2004 she founded an organization called Performance Lab. 
The work of Marielle Videler moves itself between installation, object and ‘living art, although the last qualification is one she would rather avoid herself. The word ‘Performance Art’ she likes to avoid in the context of her work. She is looking for communication and cooperation, specially designed for a certain space in time. ‘Life Wire’, she was called once; is a title she feels more comfortable with, because the encounters and exchanges is a part of her actions she finds more important then putting herself in the center of things. 
Last Friday, the 17th of December, Mariëlle was the ‘Life Wire’ for the piece ‘Journael 0742 48060003 4’ she created during her residency at IBB. The public entered a room where she was sitting behind a table with the series of 48 drawings she made during stay, like a journal. The visitor would receive a paper in which the titles of the works were printed in order of appearance, but the numbers of the sequence were scrambled. A voice in the room read the numbers, while Videler showed the drawings to the visitor in the same pace.

Next to this work, Videler worked on the project ‘Plant Exchange’ and went into different neighborhoods in Curacao asking people to trade a plant of their own. Videler created a small greenhouse on wheels in which she carried around the plants she was trading. Like a ‘tradesman’ she went from door to door, bringing a ‘stranger’ to their homes, and relocating plants all over the island. Looking for images and stories, connected to the plants, she encountered all the different cultures that reside on Curacao.

The greenhouse on wheels was inspired on the ‘Wardse Kist’; a portable greenhouse that was invented in 1829 to protect plants transported from the Caribbean to Europe to protect them against the salty seawater on the ships. The sticks that are attached to the outside of the greenhouse make a reference to the relic-shrines that were used to transport relics from the church during processions. 
This project started in Amsterdam in 2007. In this year over 174 people of different nationalities were living in the former trading town. The year after, the project was part of the International Biennial in Sinop (Turkey), situated near the coast of the Black Sea.
Of every plant she makes, in their original house, an inventory in writing and image. Like a scientist determinating a new species in the surrounding it has been found. The replacing or displacing of the plants she marks on a map by using colored dots. The mix of scientific and personal information travels along with the plant to its new home. The map became a part of the IBB collection and can be displayed on request.

Finally we will also show the result of Videler’s workshop with the IBB students. A graphic design project, that was about the meaning of certain words in Papiamentu.

Internship Eva Koen en Maarten van den Bos
In October we also welcomed Eva Koen and Maarten van Den Bos, both students from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in the Dutch city of Utrecht, for an internship at IBB. Hereby Eva and Maarten shortly introduce themselves:

Dear reader,
The both of us, Eva and Maarten, are students from Holland studying in the lovely city of Utrecht. At the time of this writing The Netherlands is covered under a layer of snow, while we like to seek the air-conditioned spaces to cool off. We are following a four-year course in Fine Art and Education, and have arrived in our fourth year now. This means we needed to seek a place for an internship in the educational work field.
The IBB is a very open institute where the team is challenged to teach young talented students of various educational levels in what art is and provides them a work environment that stimulates their artistic potential. We were very much appealed by this institute and very much wanted to contribute in the teaching, and especially in making the students familiar with the history of modern art. We’ll be staying here for the duration of eight weeks to teach and help at the institution where we can.
In our art history classes we aim to make the subject of modern art appealing and lively for the students. Very quickly we found out that it’s not enough to just ask the students to listen to what you have to say on art and the history of art. Instead we’re trying to develop approaches of teaching which will challenge the students to reflect on ways of making art and how during the course of history ideas concerning the subject, process and meaning of art changed and how we can still see the aftereffects of these gestures of avant-garde artists in our time.
We enjoy working with the students and being at IBB, where a lot of different things are happening. We participated in the project of the performance group La Pocha Nostra and the project of artist in residence Mariëlle Videler. Very different projects, but we learned a lot about different approaches to making art, work process and group dynamics.
Our ways of thinking about teaching art to young people are changing and developing during the time of our stay here, and we’re most definitely going home with changed mindsets and memories of a lot of good experiences.

Eva and Maarten

La Pocha Nostra Performance Art Workshop

From November 1st to 14 the students of IBB and a group of participants from the art and culture community on Curacao had the pleasure to work with the US-Latino performance art and pedagogy group La Pocha Nostra. A project initiated by the Spanish curator Orlando Britto-Jinorio and under the stirring guidance of US-Mexican performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña accompanied by his ‘Pocha’s’: Michele Ceballos, Dani d’Emilia and Roberto Siuentes. Spanish photographer Ana Diez came to document the results of this 10 day workshop.
During the La Pocha Nostra performance art project the students and adult participants experimented with using their own bodies as artistic material. The student workshop took part in the afternoons as were the adult group was coming during the evenings, from 8:00 to 10:00 pm. Pocha Nostra’s pedagogical system that was created during over 10 years of experience with working with professionals and students, was used here to create an awareness of the fact that the body can be used in different ways to make artistic statements. 

The adult group and a part of the students came together during a splashing finale which showed moving, daunting and exciting body images that related to identity, ethnographic diorama’s, political and social issues and just plain urban techno-cyborg stuff.
In January IBB will organize an exhibition of photographs made during the workshop by Ana Diez and local photographer Omar Kuwas. We will keep you posted!



Here are some impressions from the project with the students.

Book presentation: ‘Een koloniale speeltuin’ (A Kolonial Playground) by Miriam Sluis.

On November 11th the latest book of writer, journalist and NRC correspondent Miriam Sluis was presented at IBB. From the referendum in 2005 Sluis carfully followed the debates, developments and especially the ‘people’s voice’ around the process of restructuring the constitutional bases between the Dutch Antilles on one side and the Netherlands on the other side. But there are more parties involved behind the scene: the US, Venezuela and our neighboring islands in the Caribbean. On each island Sluis calls up a person from the community to speak about the process and their personal attachment to it.
Currently the book is only available in Dutch and sold at the local Curacaoan book stores and in the Netherlands (ISBN 9044616056)
De presentation at IBB was a lively gathering opened by IBB guest and performance artist Gullermo Gomez-Peña followed by debates, short video-interviews, Rap music by local rapper Oz, our IBB rap group (Jordan Nita, Hermanus Rojer and Hergé), and a performance by IBB co-founder and artist Tirzo Martha.

Foto: Tirzo performance: Antillia Non Grata

Special project: IBB and Ellen Spijkstra for St Albertus College

In close cooperation with visual artist Ellen Spijkstra, IBB co-founder Tirzo Martha together with IBB students are doing a special project with the students of the St. Albertus College in Pietermaai.
Initiated by the directors of Hotel and Restaurant ‘t Klooster (The Convent) and architect Lyongo Juliana (renovator of the old monumental building), IBB was invited to do a project with the school next to ‘t Klooster and more specifically; to do a project on the wall that separates the school from the hotel, which was a former convent.

Because of the historical function of the neighboring building behind the school, that currently has a commercial value, participating parties decided that this wall should be given more meaning. With clay as a base, Ellen Spijkstra and Tirzo Martha will lead a workshop with IBB and St. Albertus students on religious bass-reliefs. The objects that will come out of this workshop will be placed in the niches of the wall of the old former convent.
This week IBB has been collaborating with the St. Albertus primary school on a very special project. During the renovations / conversion of the old friar convent in pietermaai 10 alcoves were made on the walls dividing the school grounds, the first primary school of the island, and the former friar quarters. The renovators approached IBB to come up with a way to fill these alcoves so the students wouldn’t be left with a blank wall to look at. It was decided that the IBB and St. Albertus students were going to collaborate on a number of relief to be permanently mounted in the available alcoves. These reliefs will come to depict bible stories, in line with the school’s catholic roots, yet re-imagined trough the students own imagination. The students will be working under the guidance of ceramist Ellen Spijkstra.

The Orange Apples Rewards (Appeltjes van Oranje)


Together with seven other organizations, Insituto Buena Bista was choosen to present their proposal for the yearly ‘Appeltjes van Oranje’ award, an initiative of the Dutch Oranje Foundation. On Saturday November 20th IBB co-founders David Bade and Tirzo Martha together with IBB office manager Derika Bernadina, gave their best with a bright Powerpoint Presentation in a line up of 7 marvelous project proposals. IBB was rewarded with a cheque of Nafl. 2.500,- for their project during the 2011 Carnaval. This newsletter will keep you informed on the final project in due time…


International Artist in residense: Otobong Nkanga
Recently we welcomed our latest guest in residence, Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga. Immediately after arrival she started a workshop with the IBB students of which the final result will be shown in a performance at IBB in January 2011. For now we leave you with a short introduction on her background. You will learn more about her stay on Curacao in the next newsletter…

Otobong Nkanga is a visual Artist and live performer born in Kano, Nigeria. She currently lives and works in Paris and Antwerp. Nkanga began her art studies at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile- Ife, Nigeria and continued at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France. 
She was at the residency program at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 
In 2008 she obtained her Masters in the Performing Arts at Dasarts, Amsterdam. The Netherlands. 
She has exhibited widely internationally. Recent shows include: Animism,Extra City Kunsthal and M HKA Museun van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerpen, Belgium,[2010]. Diagonal Views,Nieuwe Vide, Haarlem, The Netherlands,[2009]. Re/presentaciones: ellas, Casa Africa,Las Palmas Gran Canaria,[2008]. Flow, Studio Museum Harlem, New York [2008]. Africa remix, Toured Paris, Düsseldorf, Tokyo, Johannesburg and Stockholm; Snap judgments: New Positions in African Contemporary Photography, toured New York, Miami, Mexico, Canada and the Netherlands; and over the course of the last five years, she participated in the Sharjah, Taipei, Dakar, São Paulo and Havanna Biennials.

The entire IBB team and students hereby wish you all the best wishes for this Christmas and we hope to welcome you all at IBB in the New Year. We will be closed between December 23rd and January 2nd.
Happy holidays!

NB. Sponsors and Friends of the IBB

We strive to give our students a future in the art or applied arts field and to deliver them to art academies and applied art studies with enough basic knowledge to continue their journey in the Netherlands or Caribbean Region.

For following the orientation course during one year we ask the amount of 3,000- Antillean Guilders. For most of our student here is a bottleneck. Many of them come from families that do not have enough financial background to give this opportunity to their sons and daughters. For IBB that may never be the reason a young person cannot proceed following his or her dreams. That is why we founded the Friends of the IBB Foundation that gives Organizations, Companies and private people the opportunity to ‘adopt’ one of our students for duration of their stay at IBB. In return they regularly present their progress and have a special surprise for you as their supporter.
Please contact us if you are interested in supporting them!

So far our periodical newsletter. We hope to see you soon either live at IBB paviljoen at Klinika Capriles, Mohanikanenweg 8 (behind the Peter Stuyvestant College )

We are open for visitors weekdays from 13:00 to 18:00. You are welcome any time you like…