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On Friday 19 September at 17:00, AG will see the opening of a new exhibition: Shame Dies in a Safe Space.
AG is proud to present Shame Dies in a Safe Space, an exhibition curated by Kevin Osepa, director, visual artist and lecturer at HKU Media. This exhibition features art works across various media that all take something personal as their point of departure, but ultimately reach far beyond that. In these works, the five participating artists explore what it means to name what has been silenced, and to give shape to shame, grief, or memory that often remains unspoken. But they don’t stop at naming. These works act. They intervene, disrupt, ritualize and reclaim.
“How does one give voice to the dead without simply ventriloquizing the past?” asks cultural historian and writer Saidiya Hartman. The artists in Shame Dies in a Safe Space take up that question by refusing to speak for, but instead creating forms through which suppressed realities can speak. Through sound, movement, material, and gesture, they make space for what lingers. In doing so, they engage in an embodied politics of healing and transformation. We like to invite you to experience this transformation, and to witness how shame might die in a safe space.
Kevin Osepa (1994, Willemstad, Curaçao) is based in Amsterdam. He graduated from HKU Photography in 2017, where he has been teaching since 2019. Osepa’s film La Última Ascensión (2022) won a Golden Calf for Best Short Film at the Netherlands Film Festival. In 2023, he received both the Charlotte Köhler Prize and the Amsterdam Prize for the Arts. This year, he has been nominated for the prestigious Prix de Rome 2025. Osepa’s work centers on Afro-Caribbean spirituality, identity, and colonial memory, often approached from a personal and queer perspective.
Artists
Nico Ayala Rivera (Colombia/Curaçao), Kevin Osepa (Curaçao), Sara Boumkwo (Belgium), Iyanla Etnel (Suriname), Samboleap Tol (Cambodia/Netherlands).
Iyanla Etnel graduated at Photography (HKU Media) last year, and Nico Ayala Rivera is a fourth-year student of Illustration (HKU Media).
Opening times
Wed – Sat 13.00 – 18.00
Opening
Friday 19 September 17:00
