Hans Krabbendam explained that the exhibition is the result of a project that began five years ago. Students from Radboud University, from various fields of study, were commissioned by Radboud Heritage programme to delve into the university’s archive collections. They asked critical questions about the part of the university’s heritage, that has its roots in a colonial context. The material was created for and by the Dutch, who often paid little attention to the local people. For their research, the students drew on photo albums from the KDC collections, which had been compiled by missionaries. These photographs were accompanied by captions whose content and wording no longer align with our contemporary standards and values (often due to offensive language).
Stories behind the photographs
The students enlisted the help of experts (such as Henk Moeniralam) to identify the locations and people visible in the photographs, so that they could be provided with additional context that better reflects the story behind each picture. Dionne Faaij explained that the students chose to highlight three images from the collection in the exhibit so that their stories could be told: pupils of the Rajpur Catholic Boarding School in Paramaribo, Suriname; a visit by Cardinal Alfrink and Bishop Kuijpers to the village council of Santigron, Suriname, and a school run by Catholic nuns in Malang, East Java, Indonesia. She was pleasantly surprised by the many positive reactions that followed the exhibit, which was on display last year in the University Library and now got a repeat showing at the Gelderland-Zuid Public Library at Mariënburg, Nijmegen.
Researcher and writer Henk Moeniralam, who helped identify the material from Suriname, spoke about the importance of this heritage for the community. By recontextualising the photographs, the people in the pictures are finally given a voice. This concerns a shared history between the Netherlands, Suriname and Indonesia, which is finally getting much-needed attention.
This small exhibition
is no small story.
It is a window
onto a history
that continues to resonate—
in Suriname,
in Indonesia,
in the way we see things today.
Quote from the Spoken Word by Henk Moeniralam
