Leana Boven (b. 1993, Paramaribo) is a curator, programme maker, writer, and researcher with a background in gender- and postcolonial theory. Her work centers on counterculture, diasporic connectedness and the feeling of belonging, spatial justice, ecology and decolonial climate justice, and collective care.
Leana curated her first exhibition, On Collective Care & Togetherness, at MAMA in Rotterdam in 2020, and has since organized multiple exhibitions and programs. She worked as a curator at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons for several years, and currently works as a curator at Stroom Den Haag, where she curated the exhibitions Positions: Soft Intimacies (2024) and Beloved Waters (2025). She is also a curator at Gemaal op Zuid in Rotterdam, where, together with Yusser al Obaidi, she organized the exhibition series Spiritual Disobedience (2025) and Love, Labour, Liberate (2024). Leana has taught at the Willem de Kooning Academy in the Social Practice department and is currently a tutor in Social Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven. In addition to her teaching, Leana regularly writes for platforms such as Metropolis M and is a board member at No Limits! Art Castle.
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Yusser al Obaidi
Yusser al Obaidi is a decolonial feminist researcher, writer and graphic designer who seeks to acknowledge and enable the radical potential of intimate relational spaces. She works with themes such as diasporic identity, oral histories, Sufi epistemology, modernity/coloniality, and the connection between micro and macro personal/political narratives. Her practice revolves around intimate forms of publishing and the mobilization of alternative knowledge circulation patterns for words that sit close to the skin. Her central concern: “How can we affirm other ways of being/knowing?”
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Zouhair Hammana
Zouhair Hammana (1990) is schrijver, academicus en activist. Hammana is momenteel bezig met een PhD en doceert aan de Erasmus Universiteit in Rotterdam.
Zouhair Hammana (1990) is a writer, academic and activist. His work spans and crosses the lines of various disciplines in which he attempts to dismantle oppressive structures. Hammana is currently working on a PhD and teaches at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
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Julia Wilhelm
Julia Wilhelm is an artist, cultural worker, and organiser based in Rotterdam. She is interested in building bottom-up infrastructures, developing formats for learning together, and experimenting with alternative tools for the creation and dissemination of knowledges. Julia believes in the urgency of working collectively to build alternative forms of social organizing towards communal agency and responsibility. Her current collaborations include the art collective SPIN, the radio show Nightly Manifesto, the experimental reading program Reading Rhythms Club, as well as different grassroots movements involved in anti-gentrification and anti-imperialism in Rotterdam.
The blueprints to build vessels of escape are everywhere. These blueprints
for ships that carry us to an otherwise, to other shores where the boundaries
between self and world, between me and you become fluid, have always already
been among us. They animate our desire for something better, for another way of
being—one not built on isolation, hierarchies, or destruction. They respond to our
need to traverse the sea in a longing to connect with love, to become love.
At The Shipyard, we gather to imagine and practice strategies of collective
struggle: against modernity, against the separations forced upon us by regimes
of domination. The artists in this exhibition draw from an old Sufi metaphor:
humanity settling on an island that was never meant to be permanent ground.
With the sun as collaborator, they present cyanotype patchwork sails that call
us toward the Beyond. Stranded on the island of modernity, they refuse to
settle—they call us to struggle.
Rooted in Sufi spiritualities, Black Studies, decoloniality, feminist and Marxist
traditions, Julia Wilhelm and Zouhair Hammana work with the practice of
blueprinting to chart escape routes from the brutalities of modernity. For as
Deleuze and Guattari remind us: capitalism does not only control the means
of production—it also controls the pathways of escape.
Mutual aid infrastructures make for sturdy vessels of care that allow us to
experience our interdependence. From collective learning emerge flotillas of
knowledge so we can recreate our worlds based on principles of collective
responsibility and a profound understanding of the struggles of those who came
before. Plunging through the waters of uncertainty, the spherical qufa boat of
spiritual practice gives itself over to the vast will of the ocean carrying us toward
radical love—for all beings, for being itself.
At The Shipyard, we set our sails for other shores where justice takes root.
Together, those of us who are driven by a longing to cross the ocean can study
the blueprints that were passed on.
De blauwdrukken om schepen van ontsnapping te bouwen zijn overal. Zij dragen de lijnen van een reis naar een elders, naar kusten waar de grens tussen ik en jij, tussen lichaam en wereld, vloeibaar wordt. Deze blauwdrukken waren er altijd al, diep in ons verborgen, wachtend om ons verlangen naar iets anders te bezielen: een manier van leven die niet steunt op afzondering, hiërarchie of vernietiging. Zij antwoorden op onze noodzaak om de zee over te steken, gedreven door het verlangen om liefde te ontmoeten, liefde te worden.
Op The Shipyard verkennen we samen strategieën van strijd: tegen de moderniteit, tegen de scheiding die ons is opgelegd door de krachten van overheersing. De kunstenaars in deze tentoonstelling grijpen terug op een oude soefi-metafoor:
de mens die zich vestigt op een eiland dat nooit meer dan een tijdelijke halte was. Met de zon als bondgenoot tonen zij ons cyaanotype-zeilen, patchworks die ons herinneren aan het zoeken naar het Voorbij. Gestrand op het eiland van de moderniteit weigeren zij zich neer te leggen—zij roepen ons op tot verzet.
Gegrond in soefi-spiritualiteiten, Black Studies, dekoloniale denktradities, feministische en marxistische praktijken, tekenen Julia Wilhelm en Zouhair Hammana met hun blauwdrukken ontsnappingsroutes uit de wreedheden van de moderniteit. Want zoals Deleuze en Guattari schreven: ‘kapitalisme beheerst niet alleen de middelen van productie, maar ook de wegen van ontsnapping.’
Wederzijdse zorg bouwt stevige schepen. Op deze vaartuigen leren wij onze onderlinge afhankelijkheid opnieuw kennen. Uit collectief leren ontstaan vloten van kennis, waarmee wij onze werelden herscheppen op grondslagen van gezamenlijke verantwoordelijkheid en het diepe besef van de strijd van hen die ons voorgingen.
In de wateren van onzekerheid draagt de ronde qufa-boot van spirituele praktijk zich over aan de grote wil van de oceaan, die ons beweegt richting radicale liefde—voor alle wezens, voor het zijn zelf.
Op The Shipyard hijsen we samen de zeilen naar andere kusten, waar rechtvaardig- heid wortel schiet. Daar, gedreven door ons verlangen om de oceaan over te steken, bestuderen we de blauwdrukken die ons werden nagelaten.
The Shipyard by Zouhair Hammana & Julia Wilhelm is part of the exhibition series Spritial Disobedience curated Yusser al Obaidi and Leana Boven for the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperatie at Gemaal op Zuid.
Check for public programme and visiting times: hetgemaalopzuid.nl/spiritual_disobedience
GEMAAL OP ZUID