POC POC manifesto! Navigating the art scene.

with Ratri Notosudirdjo, Quinsy Gario, Guinevere Ras, Monali Meher, Imge Özbilge

Art & expo - Wed 26 March 2025

WORM Rotterdam

Start → 20:00

End → 21:30

Language: English / Voertaal van dit event: Engels

What challenges do People of Color (POC) face in the art world? The Constant Now developed the POC POC MANIFESTO to share experiences and insights from POC, and to build a supportive and vibrant community within the arts. What started as part of the POC POC mentoring program has now grown into an inspiring public event with new voices comprised by panelists and active audience engagement.
With previous editions at FOMU, Kunsthal Gent and De Brakke Grond Amsterdam, the MANIFESTO now visits WORM! Magali Elali invited Quinsy Gario, Guinevere Ras, Monali Meher, Imge Özbilge and Ratri Notosudirdjo to join the conversation.

Get to know the guests:
Quinsy Gario is an activist, as well as a visual and performance artist. Born in Curaçao and raised in St. Maarten, Curaçao, Gario now lives and works in the Netherlands. With a BA degree in Theater, Film & Television Studies, minoring in Postcolonial Studies and Gender Studies, he is started to follow the MA program Comparative Women’s Studies in Culture and Politics at the Genderstudies department of the University of Utrecht but decided to focus on his artistic output instead. A well-known work is Zwarte Piet Is Racisme (2011–2012), which fundamentally altered a racist Dutch tradition. In 2021 Gario also ran for a seat in Dutch parliament.
Guinevere Ras works part-time as a curator at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam. She focuses on decolonizing the narrative space with exhibitions that question and complement the dominant Western narrative. Previously, she was involved in the creation of the Eregalerij Nederlandse Fotografie (2021), which is permanently on display, as well as Verbeelding (2022) and Out of This World | Sanja Marušić (2023). As a freelancer, she promotes inclusivity and plurality in the cultural sector.
Monali Meher, born in 1969 in Pune, India, is a multidisciplinary artist who studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai. Her career has spanned several decades, during which she has performed and exhibited at prominent international venues such as Tate Modern, Sinop Biennale in Turkey, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Art Dubai, MAXXI Museum Rome, Guangzhou Live in China, and the Prague Biennale. Meher’s practice explores themes of time, memory, and transformation, often through performance and site-specific installations.
Imge Özbilge is a multidisciplinary artist with a multicultural background. She has lived in countries such as Austria, Spain, Turkey, the Netherlands and is currently residing in Belgium. The starting point of her practice is based on research. Conceptual questions are followed by the exploration of figurative worlds.n 2021 her short film ‘Mosaic’ won the Honorary Mention at Ars Electronica. Selected works of the artist are in the collection of the M HKA Museum and the Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp. She’s currently part of the Renarrative exhibition in WORM.
Ratri Notosudirdjo (1994, Jakarta) is an Indonesian performance artist, storyteller, and researcher based in Rotterdam. Her work moves fluidly between dreams and reality, shaping a queer and diasporic language of storytelling. Through collaborative processes, she creates spaces where bodies, sounds, textiles and shadows come together to form mythologies about unseen and immaterial powers. Rooted in layers of belonging and memory, Notosudirdjo’s practice is an interplay between the personal and the collective, the ancestral and the contemporary, drawing on surrealism and magic realism to challenge conventional narrative-making.

Moderator: art historian and curator **Magali Elali ** is the founder of The Constant Now. This nonprofit arts organization aims to support and promote visual artists of color in Belgium and beyond. Dedicated to inclusivity, The Constant Now is addressing the underrepresentation of POC artists by creating visibility through exhibitions, talks, and mentoring. The goal is to cultivate sustained career development while shifting perspectives within institutions.