Decolonial Practices

Decolonial Practices is an open, collective project that questions structures of power, knowledge, relationships, and belonging. Starting from elsewhere, it invites shared re-thinking, unlearning, and action through art, dialogue, and care.

The project creates a pop-up community where artists, activists, cultural workers, researchers and others come together to exchange perspectives, challenge assumptions, and explore where the common might emerge. It is a year-long exploration, with four public gatherings and zine publications.

Decolonial Practices has three research lines:

Queer identity

Explores what it means to be “queer” within a neo-colonial context and questions the term as connective force across marginal positions. Rather than limiting queerness to sexuality or gender, it takes an intersectional approach that engages with body politics, racialisation, ableism and mestizaje, aiming to open space for solidarity and collective belonging.

Discplacement

Investigates decolonial epistemologies through artistic and embodied practices such as cooking, collective writing and participation. It challenges extractive research traditions and Eurocentric ideas of knowledge production. By working from the margin rather than the centre, it proposes alternative ways of thinking, remembering, and creating meaning together.

Land / Space / Place

Explores the multivocality of place, working with layered ways places and landscapes are lived and experienced rather than singular narratives. It reflects on how land use, development, and extraction or appropriation of place shape everyday life, and questions how decisions about place are made. Through collective approaches, it explores ways to foreground often-unheard forms of situated knowledge.

Partners

Decolonial Practices is a collaboration between SIGN Project Space, Professorship Image in Context (Minerva Art Academy Groningen/ Research Centre Art & Society), and artist-facilitators Yara, Khashayar Najafizadeh, and Neele Schlette. Decolonial Practices is an excerpt from Decolonial Dialogues, a project guided by teacher Bibi Straatman.