Manchá ku Goso

The Curaçao Museum

30 November 2023 19:00 t/m

30 November 2023 21:00

Vesuhely Americaan has always been someone who enjoys moments of reflection and human behavior intrigues her.
She wants to dissect situations and use her work as a tool to investigate and better understand them. Being from Curaçao, a small island with a dominant catholic influence and a melting pot of different cultures, she is constantly confronted with questions about identity.

In her work, there is a constant search for understanding identity, a need to rediscover it, and to create a new identity.
While Vesuhely was working on herself for two years she also realized that many women around her had the same insecurities and self-image issues, but were not even aware or did not have a way to work through it, but Vesuhely, through her practice, was able to work through all the questions and do all the self-reflection to be the woman she is today.

Through her research, which has quite a scientific approach, she questioned why she viewed herself and other women the way she did, she did interviews with several women ranging from 18 to 35 and wrote several self-reflective pieces and since April of 2023, she has been working with a group of ladies on the National softball team, aged 20 to 28. During the sessions with these ladies, she used prompts to start conversations and start the process of creation.

With the ‘Manchá Ku Goso’ project, Vesuhely created a safe space for women and provided them with the tools to question, self-reflect, and express themselves through the sessions, Vesuhely exponentially uses different forms of art, like painting, writing, and dancing.

Interesting to note is that during her period of self-reflection, Vesuhely found herself wondering how much of her identity is (or used to be) based on her beliefs. At some point, she could finally leave the old ‘perfectionist’ side of her behind and started searching for a balance between the old her and the new her.
What is most important of all is that now she is okay with not being perfect, thus with being stained (manchá).

We are sure that many of you recognize yourself in the theme of this project, living in a society and world, where we are constantly bombarded with what the ‘perfect image’ is supposed to be, how your body, face, hair, nails are supposed to look like to be considered ‘beautiful’. A world and society where not only the (social) media constantly tells you how you should look, but your peers and surroundings join in as well.

Join Vesuhely Americaan on November 30, 2023 and find out how she dealt with these challenges and transformed them into this beautiful project whilst helping a group of young ladies along the way resulting in the exceptional Exhibition ‘Manchá Ku Goso’.