Melissa Cijntje
Fellowship Residency: ongoing 2026
Meet & Greet: 22 May
Exhibition: 9 - 11 October
What Remains is an installation of the artist Melissa Cijntje, in which colonial history, materiality and collective knowledge merge.
Melissa grew up in Curaçao. Drawing on her personal experiences, she explores how the colonial past remains present in objects, architecture, language, and daily rituals. The project takes its starting point in the IJsselsteen: a Dutch brick that was once used as ballast on colonial ships sailing between the Netherlands and Curaçao. Upon arrival, the stones were traded for enslaved people, and many of these bricks were left behind on the island and became part of the local architecture.
In the installation, these ballast stones are transformed into ceramic dominoes. Within Caribbean culture, dominoes are not just a game but also create a social space for gathering and exchange. At the same time, these dominoes allude to the history of slavery and forced migration across the Atlantic Ocean.
Bio
Melissa Cijntje (b. Curaçao, 1997) is a visual artist exploring colonial history, cultural memory, and resilience.
In What Remains, she uses clay to create forms that bear the marks of touch, absence, and fracture, connecting the Caribbean’s past to parallel histories in Southeast Asia.
Working in Hoorn, a former VOC hub, Melissa engages with local archives and interviews to uncover shared wounds left by Dutch imperial trade. Her works invite viewers to approach difficult histories through beauty, creating space for dialogue, reflection, and the possibility of repair.
