Bio

Charlotte van Braam (she/her) is a Dutch-Indonesian (Indo) multidisciplinary visual artist-researcher. Her work reflects on identity, history, and (de)coloniality, where she takes embodied knowledge as a starting point. Creative means are her tool to express her activism, and research where she always looks for new ways to work towards collective liberation. She holds a masters degree in Race, Migration, and Decolonial Studies, and in addition to her work as artist-researcher and activist she runs an online educational platform ‘Beyond the Buzzword’ that aims to bust the myths that made decolonisation into a buzzword.

Statement

Deriving from my starting point of embodied knowledge, an overarching framework of ‘Indisch Ontzwijgen’ (Dutch-Indonesian un-silencing) emerged in my work, responding to my communities’ colonial wound/trauma condition of silence, as the inability to talk about the experiences of colonialism and migration. In my work, I approach breaking that silence, through a decolonial practice of truth telling, that visualises the harms of colonialism and thereby breaking glorification narratives of the coloniality, that are still too present. Though this, I disrupts past-present-future linearity, by exposing coloniality as a structure of power, not a historical phenomenon. My work is informed by the notion of ‘Ontzwijgen’ (Un-silencing) and responds to the violence of silence, which stretches over multiple generations. Simultaneously, through my work, I also aims to reconnect with my heritage and culture, which equally get lost in the silences. As such exploring decoloniality is interwoven through my work and informs my different creative and research processes.

CV

SEPTEMBER - NOVEMBER 2024 (upcoming) | CULTURAL HERITAGE AGENCY OF THE NETHERLANDS & REINWARD ACADEMY museum and heritage professional programme - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Sharing Stories on Contested Histories

JUNE 2024 - present| HUMANITY IN ACTION fellowship programme - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Reclaiming Narratives: Where History and Activism Meet to Pave the Future

JUNE 2024 | DECOLONIAL SUMMER SCHOOL 2024 public programme - Amsterdam and Eindhoven, Netherlands
Decolonial Aesthetics, Ancestral Musings in the Caribbean, Decolonial Feminism/Women Who Struggle and BEBOP

MAY 2024| UNIDEE RESIDENCY PROGRAMME residency - Biella, Italy
Todas Las Aguas Son Del Agua / All Waters Belong to Water

SEPTEMBER 2022-PRESENT| BUREAU OF DECOLONIAL AESTHESIS art collective - Global

MARCH-SEPTEMBER 2023 | IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART performance - Dublin, Ireland
Scenes of a Myth

JANUARY-MAY 2023 | IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART residency - Dublin, Ireland
Alien Embodiment

In addition to my work as artist researcher, I run an educational platform on decolonising, called Beyond the Buzzword:

Beyond the Buzzword

A research-based platform that aims to bust the myths that made decolonisation into a buzzword.

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