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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Pelumi Adejumo
Pelumi Adejumo is schrijver en multidisciplinair maker. Ze studeerde Creative Writing aan ArtEZ en behaalde haar master Fine Art aan het Dutch Art Institute. In 2023 ontving ze de Frans Vogel Poëzieprijs voor haar meertalige werk en in 2020 werd ze door NRC geselecteerd als een van de meest veelbelovende kunstenaars in de Lage Landen.
Haar praktijk verkent de relaties tussen meertaligheid, het lichaam, mythologie en collectief geheugen, vaak via geluid, performance en tekst.
Ze was vertaler van de multimediale voorstelling Minor Music at the End of the World, geschreven door Saidiya Hartman en geregisseerd door Sarah Benson, die in 2025 in première ging bij Internationaal Theater Amsterdam in opdracht van de Hartwig Art Foundation. In 2025/2026 is ze een van de deelnemers aan de MacDowell Fellowship in New Hampshire.
Adejumo publiceert en treedt op in binnen- en buitenland. Haar werk was onder meer te zien in De Gids, De Groene Amsterdammer, Point de Chute, Furious Flower IV, Museum Arnhem, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, A Tale of A Tub en Savvy Contemporary. Daarnaast werkte ze als scriptiebegeleider bij de Sandberg Master BlackerBlackness Studies en is ze actief als programmeur en vertaler bij het internationale literatuurfestival Read My World.
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Pelumi Adejumo is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. She studied Creative Writing at ArtEZ and obtained her Master of Fine Art degree from the Dutch Art Institute. In 2023, she received the Frans Vogel Poetry Prize for her multilingual work, and in 2020 she was selected by NRC as one of the most promising artists in the Low Countries.
Her practice explores the relationships between multilingualism, the body, mythology, and collective memory, often through sound, performance, and text.
She was the translator of the multimedia performance Minor Music at the End of the World, written by Saidiya Hartman and directed by Sarah Benson, which premiered in 2025 at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, commissioned by the Hartwig Art Foundation. In 2025/2026, she is one of the participants in the MacDowell Fellowship in New Hampshire.
Adejumo publishes and performs both nationally and internationally. Her work has appeared in, among others, De Gids, De Groene Amsterdammer, Point de Chute, Furious Flower IV, Museum Arnhem, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, A Tale of A Tub, and Savvy Contemporary. She has also worked as a thesis supervisor in the Sandberg Master BlackerBlackness Studies and is active as a programmer and translator for the international literature festival Read My World.
Spiritual Disobedience #03 The Throes/De Naweeën: evoking earth’s body
Language carries not only meaning, but also history—often burdened, sometimes suppressed. It
holds traces of subjugation, religion, loss, but also of resistance, imagination, and healing. As the
poet and artist Pelumi Adejumo rediscovers the language of her ancestors, unexplainable grief
finds its home in the story of Ibeyi — the sacred twins of Yoruba mythology. Their story promises
us a (re)union of spirit and matter, and exposes the myth of Separation. In the upcoming
exhibition at Gemaal op Zuid The Throes/De Naweeën Pelumi Adejumo explores how Yoruba
mythology and cultural memory engage with grief, mortality, and desire.
A new performance made by Adejumo and performed by Serah Doku Meijboom and Maïté
Egeolu, will premiere during the opening on 28 November 2025. It retells the myth of the twins:
one moving through hurdles on earth, while the other has passed into the realm of spirit.
Although residing in different realms, they remain tethered to one another, leading to a haunting,
evolving connection between these two realms. Adejumo asks us: what other-worlds can we access
through the stories and myths that have been passed down to us?
In The Throes/De Naweeën Pelumi Adejumo views mythology as a balm to speak about the
unbearable, a language beyond the scientific, rooted in rituals. Through public programs like
writing workshops, the exhibition opens up Yoruba mythological history to wider conversation,
especially for those in the diaspora seeking reconnection.
The Throes/De Naweeën: evoking earth’s body
Opening: 28 November 2025
public programme: sign up via bit.ly
Locatie: Gemaal op Zuid
The Throes / De naweeën Gemaal op Zuid proudly presents the exhibition The Throes // De naweeën, in which Pelumi Adejumo explores how Yoruba mythology and culture engage with mourning, mortality, and desire. At the heart of the exhibition lies the myth of Ibeji (the twins), alongside traditional cosmologies and the transmission of knowledge, approached through myths and musical traditions.
This new work is part of Adejumo’s ongoing research in image, sound, and language. As part of this process, she traveled to archives and markets in Lagos in search of books and conversations with people about the suppressed indigenous religion and cosmology Ifa, rituals surrounding birth and death, and the ways in which mythology functions as a balm to speak about the inexplicable or the taboo surpassing the scientific knowledge.
Mythology is seen through different works and materials, appearing in variations across sound works, performance, and photography. For the sound works, Adejumo, in collaboration with Gleb Maiboroda, created two “wombs”: cocoon-like sound installations made of raw wool dyed with onion skins. Visitors are invited to sit inside and become enveloped in sound. Here, fabric, color, and sound are approached as carriers of spirit.
Through public programs, including writing workshops, a shared interest in Yoruba mythological history comes together. Knowledge that is often difficult to access for members of the diaspora is collectively studied and discussed, opening pathways toward new understandings.
At the opening on 28 November, a new performance will be presented, developed in collaboration with performers Serah Doku Meijboom and Maïte Egeolu. This performance retells the myth of the twins Ibeyi in a new form: one twin has left the physical earth early but remains in contact with the other. What begins innocently evolves into a turbulent dynamic, as the deceased twin attempts to draw the living one into the spirit world. The performance reappears in the exhibition as a video work.
The exhibition The Throes // De naweeën will run until mid February 2026.
Join us for the opening The Throes/De Naweeën
As the third chapter of the exhibition series Spiritual Disobedience: parallel portals of crossing curated by Yusser al Obaidi and Leana Boven.
For more info about the public programs in January 2026 please check and sign up via this link: bit.ly
GEMAAL OP ZUID