Installation reads as possessed. This metaphoric communal brain is a promise that relates to Emmanuel Levinas’ idea: encountering the an Other creates magic. In this sense, the installation is a manifestation of ‘documents with spirit’ and activates _Butterfly Currency_. With respect to the tarot, the ritual _COUP 22_ defines process invisible dialogue. As intersection of real and symbology, this imaginary demonstrates a postmodern economy. The series mimic a text of multiple dimensional conversations between 2015 – 2020 in which African, Native American, and European technology are entangled. Masks tradition, the power of death, and sustainability of quilting conjoin in these works. A celebration of the life/dead/rebirth-cycle.

A Never-ending Story? (vol. 0)

These 55 double sided paintings are produced with glue, acrylic, pemba, bluing, clitoria flower extract, and charcoal. The works relate to the installation **_Butterfly Currency_**. The installation is a metaphoric communal heart as a series of 55 canvases that are painted both sided and presented spatially: either all, or in sets of 11, or in sets of 5\. **_Alakondre Blue | 55 Azulejos_** promotes the idea “that prioritizing the existence of an Other is inclusive”. The work’s is imagined as revisiting **_Butterfly Currency,_** and both demonstrates a postmodern economy. Material ‘mining’ is based on creative encounters in Suriname and artist residencies in Brazil, Peru, and Mexico and recycling previous painting made between 2011 – 2022\. 

  

Alakondre Blue | 55 Azulejos

All 440 collages are mixed media collages, demonstrating Butterfly Currency. This promise revealed itself in the installation _A Never-Ending Story? volume 1_ by _tumpi flow._ These collages were produced in sets of 22, referred to as COUP 22: a creative process inspired by the 22 cardinal cards in the tarot. Production took place as a transnational and complex system. Assymbolic space for encounters. The ‘extraction’ of material and production took place through encounters, based on art workshops with children and teenagers in Suriname, and encounters with creative professionals in Brazil and Mexico between 2015 and 2020.

Butterfly Currency (vol. 0)

Mixed media collages, demonstrating Butterfly Currency. A promise that revealed itself in the installation _A Never-Ending Story? volume 1_ by _tumpi flow._ These collages were produced in sets of 22, referred to as COUP 22: a creative process inspired by the 22 cardinal cards in the tarot. Production took place as a transnational and complex system. Assymbolic space for encounters. The ‘extraction’ of material and production took place through encounters, based on art workshops with children and teenagers in Suriname, and encounters with creative professionals in Brazil and Mexico between 2015 and 2020\. 

Butterfly Currency (vol. 1)

**_Butterfly Currency_** is an installation made of recycled material. Based on mixed media collages, this visual language critiques modern economy that is generally based on profit than sustainability. These collages were produced by recycling used paper and textile by ‘extracting’ the material from creative workshops provided to children/teenagers and from artistic experiments with visual artists and fashion designers as artist residence. In both cases the used materials were collected and re-used while doodling as quilt. Basically, paper and textile cutting and reframing the purpose and meaning of materials. Material collecting took took place between 2015 and 2020 in Brazil, Suriname, and Mexico. 

These 440 mixed media on paper collages, sized between 10 x 15 cm and 12.5 x 18.5 cm, are each in a numbered red envelope. All 440 collages arranged in Henri de Haas' metal covered case which he used for storing his watercolors.440 mixed media on paper collages, sized between 10 x 15 cm and 12.5 x 18.5 cm, each in a numbered red envelope. All 440 collages arranged in Henri de Haas' metal covered case which he used for storing his watercolors.

Butterfly Currency (1st Bienal das Amazônia)

Collaboration with Readytex Art Gallery (Sep. 2021 – Feb 2023)

Project explored ambiguities of ‘identity’ in Suriname as ‘alakondre-fasi’. Through artistic

research (intersection between art and knowledge as non-discursive philosophy), this study

investigated a framework of artistic, spiritual, and socio-political experience in the context

of Suriname. The term ‘alakondre’ derives from ‘winti’ (a hybrid religion based on Am.

Indigenous, European, and African traditions) as all-inclusive space and ‘fasi’ for method

(lingua-franca). Research into ‘alakondre- fasi’ explored inclusivity and plurality as

representation and identification based on a series of creative reflections (Art

Manifestations) and artist deliberations (as ‘Alakondre Krutu’) throughout the project

ALAKONDRE: A Space in Time combining traditional and modern approaches; explored

through counseling/caring. To develop curating/staging in the context of Suriname, this

process fulfilled the need to investigate artistic productions and curatorial concepts of

importance in multilingual and multicultural communities for societal resilience. This model

of versatility aims at translating its multilingual and multicultural composition.

Case study ALAKONDRE - A Space in Time

_Nomathemba_ is at the intersection of research, performance, installation, sculpture, curating, research and multi-dimensional conversation. This experimental system results from the reflective sessions with artists affiliated with Readytex Art Gallery. On another level, the work is a conversation between Kurt Nahar and EdKe. For EdKe, the aim is to activate a ‘magical polymorphic substance’. This substance of color triggers all senses (Taussig, 2010). Kurt Nahar relates the artwork to Nomathemba: the mother of trust and hope; a goddess who watches over all her children. Kurt says: "She appears in difficult times as the giver of hope.” 

As part of the research project 'deeep blue', this entanglement of human and other-than-human imagines biological, geological, mechanical and spiritual: a _cyborg feminist_ performance depicting a superhuman carries 55 invisible letters that manifest themselves through masks. 

  

Nomathemba (vol. 0)

An installation reads as a performance. This process, in dialogue executed as _PSYCHOMAMIO_ _(2016-2021),_ is a form of creative documentation related to Afrofuturism which promotes a practice of simultaneously navigating through the past, the present and the future (Gaskins, 2016). In Suriname, _mamio_ is a quilt made of fabric remnants. The work depicts as 3D _mamio_ and is the result of a research ritual to reflect on socio-political issues, taking into account both knowing and not knowing (mind and intuition). It symbolizes my performance persona's conversations with my imagination: a dialogue between Boni and Kwasi (18th century figures in the context of Suriname). The elements in the work, collected during a set of five art manifestation related to dialectics between 2010 and 2020\. With their own histories, objectas collected represent a journey through a network of human an other-than-human agents. The work is informed in dialogue with the book _Kritiek van de Zwarte Rede_ and is manifesting as the series ‘The Negro bible’. This metaphorical handbook functions as a non-existing manual in which she explored new space-time to de- and recode dominent systems of knowledge and technology, informed and challenges tradition. This _mamio_ demonstrates a my conversation with my persona, journeying between myth and fact: an artefact representing beyond the physical world.

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Miguel Benhur-Keerveld