What Knots Knot Knots is a Noorderlicht initiative, developed in collaboration with archive and cultural institutions in the Northern Netherlands. What Knots Knot Knots will be on display from June 26, 2026, at VHDG in Leeuwarden, Westerbork Camp Memorial Centre and DIEP in Drenthe, Groninger Museum (Wall House#2 location) and Noorderlicht in Groningen.
Untold past
The Northern Netherlands has its own colonial past, but little is said about it. Yet there are many interconnected stories from Groningen, Friesland, and Drenthe. In the seventeenth century, Frisian universities and cartographers worked for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (WIC). Ships from Groningen sailed to Ghana to trade enslaved people. In the eighteenth century, Jan Albert Sichterman, VOC director in Bengal, lived in Groningen. He made a lot of money and used it to build a large house on the Ossenmarkt. He also collected many objects. Part of his collection can still be seen in the Groninger Museum. In the twentieth century, Moluccan KNIL soldiers and their families came to the former Westerbork camp. Migrant workers also came to Friesland to work in agriculture and industry.
Art as a way to make stories visible
Archives do not preserve everything. Some stories disappear or remain unknown. Artists look at archives differently than historians. They ask questions about what is and isn't preserved and connect stories in new ways. The eight artists conducted research in local archives and spoke with people from the area. For the project, they created photography, videos, installations, and a large mural. Each artwork is connected to a specific place and community. The works make difficult and often hidden stories visible and discussable.
What Knots Knot Knots
The title What Knots Knot Knots comes from a statement by Donna Haraway: "it matters what knots knot knots."¹ By this, she means that the way you connect things determines which story you can tell. Therefore, the project does not tell one grand story about the colonial past. Instead, it presents various local stories from multiple centuries side by side. This clarifies how these histories are interconnected.
Noorderlicht developed this project because it is important to bring attention to this history in the Northern Netherlands as well. The project also marks the beginning of a longer collaboration between organizations in Groningen, Drenthe, and Friesland to further investigate and visualize this past.
¹ Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 12: "It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties."