n the seventeenth century, Amsterdam with all of its immigrants was the precursor of New York City. In the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth century, more than 150,000 Protestant refugees fled from - nowadays Belgium - to the
Dutch Republic, of which many settled in Amsterdam.
As he sits in the office chair on the top floor of Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg, Wouter van Ransbeek (39) rubs his
blue eyes. The new deputy director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam (TA) still has jetlag.
Shaped like rays of sunshine, Cyrus Kabiru’s
metallic eyeglasses, made with found objects,
draws us into ‘Making Africa’ like a magnet. The display of several glasses perched at various heights and directed at a photo of Kabiru’s main character is a metaphor for the variousperspectives of viewing the continent. According to Amelie Klein, the Vienna-born curator of the Vitra Design Museum, “Africa needs to be seen in another light. Western media portrays Africa in standardized clichés: poverty, corrupt heads of state, and men that can dance”. She laughs, “ I ’ve seen many African men who have no feeling for rhythm, and they certainly can’t dance”.
n 2014 Banksy made headline news when pop-idol Justin Bieber had 'Girl With a Balloon', a stencil from
the British prankster and graffiti artist tattooed on his lower right arm. Some Bieber critics ranted that the
singer should have his arm cut off, and auction off the Banksy work of art. To this day, Banksy still remains
anonymous but since his 'Girl With a Balloon', which was first stenciled on the wall of a stairway in London's
South Bank in 2002, his works are sold for exorbitant prices.
