Museumweek: Garden of Scars tours

1 April 2023

11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

A series of tours through Ibrahim Mahama's Garden of Scars.

Invite someone along

From Saturday 1 to 7 Friday April, the 9th Museum Week will take place. On Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 April, our tour guides will take you through Ibrahim Mahama's installation Garden of Scars. They will talk about his work from a personal perspective.

Participation

Pre-registration is not necessary. Participation is free with a valid Oude Kerk admission ticket.

Start of guided tour

Every hour on Saturday between 11 am until 4 pm. Tours last approximately 25 minutes.

Tours on 2 April

look here for tours on 2 April
Oude Kerk Walk Talk Ama van Dantzig 04 low res foto Maarten Nauw

About Ibrahim Mahama's Garden of Scars

In recent years, Ibrahim Mahama has become an internationally respected artist. Especially for the Oude Kerk, Mahama developed a room-filling installation. This is Mahama's first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. His work explores a global history of trade routes, migration flows and (post)colonialism.

read more about the art installation
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The tour guides speak

Rik Bakker: 'Ibrahim Mahama's installation not only confronts us with an uncomfortable past, but his Garden of Scars, is also about 'scarrification' in the present such as neo-colonial practices of exploitation and extraction that help hinder solutions to global ecological crises.'

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Gerard van Vuuren: 'Mahama's stone garden is alive, every morning when I walk into the church at its opening I think a crack has widened here, a twig growing out of the concrete there. Scars, marks, connections and contradictions are obscured, or rather sharpened by the ever-changing light in the church.'

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Belle van Bergeijk: 'When I walk through the Oude Kerk, I always direct my gaze upwards. The ceiling paintings let me escape to another world. Mahama's Garden of Scars made me focus more on the floor. There is a history buried under the tombstones, which comes to the surface through Mahama's sculptures. The light in the church now shines on the shared world that has become visible.'