Open Studio: Fré Calmes

On Saturday, November 21, from 12:00 to 18:00, Thami Mnyele Foundation (Bellamystraat 21D) will host an open studio with resident Fré Calmes. Feel free to pop in to see Fré’s works and have a chat with the artist. Please note that from 15:00 to 16:30, there will be an artist talk with Thami Mnyele Foundation fellows, Totomboti Collective.

Fré Calmes (they/them) was born in 1985 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, grew up in Curaçao, and has been living and working in Amsterdam-East as an artist and designer since 2013. Their artistic practice is shaped by a deeply rooted spiritual and cultural background. Having grown up with influences from both Catholicism and the Voodoo tradition, Calmes explores how spirituality, ritual and ancestral knowledge can shape a contemporary visual art practice.

Within their work, Calmes develops a unique approach which they call Neo Voodooism: a contemporary interpretation of traditional voodoo rituals, in which spiritual acts are translated into visual art, performance and installation. In this context, rituals do not function as an illustration of a belief system, but as an artistic method through which images, objects and performances emerge from a spiritual encounter.