
Michelle Piergoelam –
The Untangled Tales
October 4 to January 26, 2025
The exhibition shows photos from the ongoing project The Untangled Tales by Michelle Piergoelam (1997, Rotterdam). The project is a photo series of stories about hope and resilience and shows the ways in which oral traditions, traditions and coded language give us insight into the years of slavery and the period afterward in Suriname. It is also about how this cultural legacy transforms into new traditions.
Examples of different code languages are the folded headscarves called 'angisa', stories about the spider Anansi, work songs and botany. These stories and traditions, mostly passed down from Africa to Suriname, and from generation to generation, allowed enslaved people to share their thoughts without the slave owner knowing what was meant. These are different ways of hope and resilience that have been used during and after this period. It was a way to create cultural meaning and feel empowered.
Michelle Piergoelam is a photographer who creates visual stories based on cultural myths, dreams and memories. Photos in which cultural traditions, stories and landscapes are interwoven. She consciously uses indigenous stories to emphasize their cultural importance and as testimony to underexposed culture and history.
Image: Michelle Piergoelam – songs in a strange land
Click here for an overview of all activities organised for this exhibition.
Interview by Kim Knoppers with Michelle Piergoelam
Kim Knoppers, guest curator of the series Let Go and Cherish of which this exhibition is part, spoke extensively with Michelle Piergoelam about her fascination with cultural stories and myths, the latest part Fourteen Leaves and a Cup of Water of her project The Untangled Tales, and the work she made based on the tobacco filling machine (1762) of the Haarlemthe tobacco shop De Gouden Kroon from the museum's collection. Read the entire interview here.


