iHuis Marseille, Museum for PhotographyGrachtengordel
Maya Inès Touam: Belongings
The French-Algerian artist's first solo Dutch museum show, presenting digital collages built from hundreds of photographs that explore migration, motherhood and displacement.
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Preview: written before the show opened
Each still life here is hundreds of photographs passing as one. Maya Inès Touam arranges objects in her studio, makes tiny adjustments, shoots every step, then merges the frames into a single image, some built from thousands. In one, a Louis Vuitton ball balances on a battered tin under dried protea, beside a watermelon.
This is her first solo museum show in the Netherlands. The prints sit on supports with a past of their own: hinged altarpiece panels, Gothic arches, folding screens, even serving trays. You walk up to what looks like a church retable and find banana leaves and a carved figure behind its doors. Matisse is the clearest borrowing, and other works retell Icarus, a Senegalese folk tale, or female leaders history left out.
Entry is €12.50, free for under-18s and Museumkaart holders, and Thursdays run until 9pm. The galleries are up the stairs of two canal houses.
Look for
Retable Agoodjié et sa reine
Arched wooden doors open like an altarpiece onto banana leaves, a carved figure and a gourd; Touam has said her Agoodjié retables tell of Tassin Hangbè, a Beninese regent erased from Dahomey's history.
LV et Protéa
Look for a Louis Vuitton monogram ball perched on a rusted tin, crowned with dried protea, between a ring of blue beadwork and a watermelon on an orange table.
Nature morte à la grenade
From Huis Marseille's own collection: a split pomegranate and two oranges on a red cloth, an empty tin set in a green bowl, and a portrait plate on the wall.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
With kids
Under-18s get in free. The galleries are spread over many stairs in two canal houses, so prams have to be left at reception.
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Image credits
9
- Maya Inès Touam: Belongings© Maya Inès Touam
- Glass, Made in AntiquityCourtesy of Allard Pierson
- Cabinet of Stories: Change the World, Not UsCourtesy of Allard Pierson
- Do It Yourself! On CassetteCourtesy of Allard Pierson
- Huis Marseille, Museum for PhotographyHmamsterdahm, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- Allard PiersonAndy Li (Onthewings), Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Museum Van LoonRijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Foam Fotografiemuseum AmsterdamDqfn13 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL
- Royal Palace AmsterdamC messier, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0