Leiden is a city defined by its historical, cultural and artistic heritage, but where is the continuity? Where are the young artists of the city? In ‘What Have We Here?’, five artists (Aratrika K, Erik Eska, Sam WF en Pansee Atta) connected to Leiden will explore these and other questions. TROEF functions as a shared studio, where they come together to work collectively on a series of interventions within and beyond the exhibition space. These interventions aim to meet the city of Leiden and its people as they are, rather than how they are represented.
My part of the collaborative project consisted of a mass of images adapted from both (Ancient) Egypt and the Netherlands, and an invitation to visitors to envision strange, new hybrid forms with them. With visitor and collaborating artist contributions, the mural gradually evolved over the course of the exhibition.
Thinking through ways of liberating Leiden’s histories and collections, this collaboration was a way of allowing these ‘migrant’ symbols to gain new life outside the museum, as enacted through citizen’s hands. With images based on an open-source repository of Ancient Egyptian images, I envisioned this project as a kind of democratic, open-source alternative to museum exhibitionary structures.
Article about the exhibition (in Dutch):
https://sleutelstad.nl/2026/06/28/wat-hebben-we-hier-groepstentoonstelling-troef
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