while in english

On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition How Far How Near: The World in the Stedelijk, the Public Program of the Stedelijk presents the performance A Village Called Gario, by Quinsy Gario and the Afrovibes festival. The video of the performance was shot and edited by Leon de Bruijne. This performance is actually less related to the Gairo’s personal experience and family history than the title might suggest; instead, it focuses on patterns of migration, both general and specific, which are relevant to family histories in different ways. Taking an existing village called Gario in the Central Republic of Africa as a point of departure, the artist tells the partly fictional, partly factual story of a global journey.The inspiration for this one-man performance comes from the travelogues of colonial explorers. Like them, Gario combines locally collected knowledge with imagined stories. His work addresses topics such as migrations and the resulting rise of trans-locality, themes that are currently discussed in the exhibition How Near How Far. A previous performance of Gario, Zwarte Piet is Racism, had a broad (international) public debate as a result. ABOUT QUINSY GARIO Quinsy Gario was born in Curaçao and raised in St. Maarten and the Netherlands. Under the pseudonym T. Martinus, Gario has self-published two poetry collections. He won the Hollandse Nieuwe prize for theater makers in 2011 and in 2012 he started his own radio show called Roet in het eten (Spanner in the works). His video work has been shown on MTV Netherlands, and he is a member of the pan-African artist collective The State of L3. Group exhibitions include Galleri Image (Denmark); Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerpen (Belgium); and SMART Project Space and Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (Netherlands). He has performed in MC Theater (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Ballhaus Naunynstraße (Berlin, Germany) and Contact Theater (Manchester, Great Britain). In June 2014, Gario performed A Village Called Gario at MACBA, Barcelona. - See more at: http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/calendar/p...