Kunsthal Rotterdam

Celebrate the imagination and participate in All you can Art! At All you can Art everyone – and we literally mean everyone – has an opportunity to make art, learn and discover. All summer long, the creative energy is literally tangible in the open studio and the organically growing exhibition at the Kunsthal. This summer, IBB founders and artists David Bade and Tirzo Martha will be joined by social practice artists Elvis Chen, Roxette Capriles, Goretti Pombo and the collective Take A Way to alternately work on different projects in and outside of the Kunsthal.

The open studios are locations where people can come together to make art, inspire each other, have discussions with each other, and present art. The manoeuvrability and flexible approach of All you can Art leads to undefined results and encounters. People from various backgrounds come together to exchange stories and ideas. A diverse group of people can thus find each other at the Kunsthal. Together they will participate in realising various large and small projects and artworks. 

David Bade 

This summer, David Bade (1970, Curaçao) presents an extraordinary project called Kunst Thuisbezorgd  (Art Delivered at Home), in collaboration with Summerschool students, Kunsthal visitors, and our partners Reakt and Laurens. Create an artwork for someone you love or wish to surprise with a gift. Kunst Thuisbezorgd. ensures that the artwork is delivered to the recipient in Rotterdam. Social engagement is - in addition to the diverse use of materials and colours, and the combination of figuration and abstraction -  a main characteristic of David Bade’s work. Life in all its complexity is prominently present in his oeuvre, and he may capture all kinds of unexpected moments in his artworks. His work reacts to various societal and socially engaged themes, including politics, sex, art, and sports. Ambiguous titles put powerful images into perspective. Armed with a healthy dose of humour, sensitivity, and compassion, Bade uses his art to comment on society.

Tirzo Martha 

Over the past two years, Tirzo Martha (1965, Curaçao) has collaborated with visitors of the Pauluskerk. The Pauluskerk offers a safety net to the city’s most vulnerable people. Again this year, Martha is working with visitors of the Pauluskerk, along with Summerschool students and Kunsthal visitors. Martha makes art out of necessity – not to be creative, but to express his social commitment. He sees art as a tool to improve and develop a community. From this point of departure he engages people in his work and involves them in the development of ideas, new visions, new approaches to problems, and in the creative process. Martha researches peoples’ living conditions; how they approach their space and their objects, as well as their thoughts, dreams, and disillusions. In the politically and socially engaged installations and sculptures he creates with collected materials and everyday objects he shows the precarious balance, the inherent inequality, and the complex structure of (Curaçaoan and Caribbean) society.

Elvis Chen 

Elvis Chen (1988, Paramaribo) graduated from the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague and is a seasoned IBB alumnus. Born in Suriname and later emigrated to Curacao, he often comes across people who are experiencing a different reality. The clients of the psychiatric clinic Capriles – the IBB home base –, for instance. Chen is interested in the discrepancy between appearance and reality. People often (subconsciously) judge others by their appearance. Assumptions on the basis of ethnicity, social class, and gender are used to form a profile of others. In his often-autobiographical work, Chen shows how developments in someone’s life can change the perception of identity. In this process he does not shy away from expressing criticism on society, researching his own situation, family, and people close to him, or the clichés we cling on to. In this turbulent time of global wars and protests, Chen, places great value on ongoing dialogue. He has conceived a special project to promote these dialogues. He collects the wishes, dreams, and fears of both Kunsthal visitors and patients of Laurens and incorporates them into a kite-shaped sculpture.

Roxette Capriles

Roxette Capriles (1993, Curaçao) is an artist working under the pseudonym Anartist Vineyard, in House of Vineyard. House of Vineyard is the first house to bring the ballroom scene from the United States to the Netherlands. In 2023, the Dutch Ballroom Scene celebrates its 10th anniversary, with the first ball held at BIRD Rotterdam. Currently, there exists a fragmented history of the ballroom scene, consisting of images, videos, objects, and stories. Anartist transforms their studio into a living archive, a central place where this summer the ballroom community comes together to collect, organize, classify, and recreate the history of the past 10 years. Anartist Vineyard was born and raised in Curaçao. They graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy in 2016, winning the Drempelprijs with their work 'Rots in de Brand’(Rock on Rire). In 2017, Anartist returned to Curaçao to give workshops to IBB students. Currently, they live and work in Rotterdam, constantly exploring the role of the artist in society by inviting others to participate in the process of creation, play, and thought.

Goretti Pombo

This summer, Goretti Pombo (Curaçao, 1994) reflects on the exhibition Acknowledge Rebuild together with visitors to the Kunsthal and participants of the Summerschool of All you can Art. She invites people to make their voices heard and speak out against injustice. After studying at Instituto Bueno Bista in 2016, Pombo obtained her bachelor's degree in Fine Arts at the Willem de Kooning Academy in 2020. Pombo translates her experiences into her art in a playful and idiosyncratic way. Her work rebels against societal expectations for women and out of fear of being bored in life. Playfulness, wonder and humour form the basis of her creative process, where she experiments with different media such as drawing, painting, performance, videos and textiles. She uses whatever is appropriate to express her enthusiasm.

Take A Way

Take A Way is a collective that originated in Rotterdam's Tarwe neighbourhood. Neighbours meet weekly at various locations to make coffee, share stories and design products. By getting together regularly and working creatively, different insights, connections and friendships are created between participants and a community is built where people can help each other.