Patricia Kaersenhout

Visual artist and cultural activist Patricia Kaersenhout, born in the Netherlands from Surinamese parents, developed an artistic journey in which she investigates her Surinamese background in relation to her upbringing in a West European culture. The political thread in her work raises questions about the African Diaspora’s movements and it’s relation to feminism, sexuality, racism and the history of slavery. She considers her art practice to be a social one. With her projects she empowers (young) men and women of color and supporting un documented refugee women.
Proud Rebels is a project about an important black feminist wave which took place in the 80ties and was funded by CBK Zuidoost and Amsterdam Fund for the arts. In 2015 she went to Dakar invited by the Dutch embassy to do a preventive project on female trafficking. She is a regular lecturer at the Decolonial summerschool in Middelburg, the Black summerschool in Amsterdam and at B.E.B.O.P. (Black Europe Body politics).
She quoted The Dinner Party of Judy Chicago, only this time black women and women of color, who were erased and forgotten by West European history, are honored. Her solo show Blood Sugar deals with the painful history of enslaved people, blood and sugar. By revealing forgotten histories she tries to regain dignity.
She participated in Prospects 4, the New Orleans Biennial 2017 and was selected to participate at Manifesta 12 in Palermo, Italy in 2018 where she shows The Soul of Salt, where visitors are asked to take some salt home and resolve it in water, symbolically resolving the pain of the soul of the enslaved ancestors (until Novemer 4, 2018).