move not for reason but love

move not for reason but love, spring programme at Casco Art Institute, featuring three distinct exhibitions by Winnie Herbstein, Avan Omar, and Ama Josephine Budge.

Across three interconnected exhibitions, move not for reason but love questions the erasure of history, the politics of representation, and the silences of archives. At the same time, the artists explore how embodied, living memories can function as a counter-archive to history.

At the core is the question of what draws us toward the familiar and moves us away from the unknown, and what it means to be moved. How can we re-examine that which is taken for granted within dominant systems of knowledge? And how do we make space for—and hold onto—narratives and experiences that have been pushed to the margins of history?

Through video, sculpture, architecture, photography, and drawing, Herbstein, Avan, and Budge bring memories to life in the present. Using performative, spatial, and documentary approaches, they make tangible what has vanished, been forgotten, or relegated to the background, placing it center stage once again.

The title is taken from a line of poetry by Aja Monet. With love as the heartbeat through which living histories are made palpable anew, it articulates what drives the artists: care, accountability, and justice.

Winnie Herbstein presents We need to speak about living room, a newly co-developed exhibition and film project exploring community-led housing models and the tensions that emerge within them. The project takes place at both Kunsthuis SYB and Casco.

Avan Omar presents Zero Art, a multidisciplinary exhibition examining how political shifts and social transformations in South Kurdistan between 1990 and 2010 shaped art and cultural memory. The project brings together works by various artists and activates archives as dynamic sites for historical reinterpretation, dialogue, and collaborative knowledge production.

Ama Josephine Budge presents A Voyeur at the Keyhole, an installation of hollowed, unfired clay bodies pierced with keyholes. Within it, she explores Blackness, mixed identity, queerness, and motherhood—a realm of opacity and pleasure where Black futures emerge through care, intimacy, and embodied continuity.