Each year, the Mondriaan Fund organizes an orientation trip for visual artists, curators and art mediators to interesting, foreign regions. The purpose of these trips is to provide an overview of the contemporary art scene in the country concerned as well as to stimulate international cooperation and exchange of knowledge between visual art professionals.
This year, I was part of the Orientation Trip to India, with 19 other incredible (artistic) directors, curators, researchers, and artists from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, and Denmark. The travel was guided by Haco de Ridder, senior project officer international relations at the Mondriaan Fund.
These travels through India and Thailand came at a vital moment for my curatorial work at Nieuwe Instituut. As I work to expand the network for New Currents: Indian Ocean Futures, these visits were less about observing “grand structures” and more about understanding the ‘soft side’ of heritage: the stories, lived experiences, and everyday knowledge that define how people truly inhabit space.
In both India and Thailand, the dialogue shifted toward vernacular resilience, and ancestral knowledge. We explored how local materiality and building techniques can offer more mindful, ecological ways to preserve our built environment. It became clear that in regions where rapid, capital-driven development often overlooks local intent, it is the grassroots collectives and bottom-up initiatives that are successfully defending the public domain. These groups are the keepers of the histories embedded in the everyday—histories that are often missing from formal institutional archives.
These encounters have provided a rich foundation for our upcoming publications and exhibitions, ensuring they are rooted in genuine cross-pollination and a deep respect for the knowledge practices that resonate across the Indian Ocean.