super feelings is a four-part exhibition, event programme and reader, which unfolds at de Appel throughout the autumn months of September, October and November 2022. super feelings is developed by the participants of this year’s Curatorial Programme.

an elevation

thinking about you. in the sand,
dry and fluid - the wind blowing
you shape-shifting

are we these images?1

We’re honoured to welcome artist Jota Mombaça to open the programme with episode 1 – sinking could be. In an episode that is both a performance and its residue, Mombaça bathes de Appel’s space in blue light and lays a provisional landscape of sand dunes on the Aula floor.

sinking could be continues a cycle of recent site-specific performances in which Mombaça works with an assembly of materials including blue light, sound and cotton textiles to inform ‘a practice of elemental sensing.’ This practice moves with, and across, bodies of water, from the Venetian lagoon to Stockholm’s Baltic Sea archipelago and most recently, Amsterdam’s canals. For sinking could be, Mombaça extends this material enquiry to the shoreline and the fluidity of sand, evoking the presence of nearby Sloterplas lake, mined for sand to build Amsterdam’s Western Garden Cities. Does a dune remember the ocean; does sand recall water's embrace?

Submerged within the dunes of sinking could be are a group of newly-commissioned metal sculptures, cut by pressurised water to the lines of the artist’s drawings and wrapped with cotton textiles. For a period of two weeks prior to the opening of episode 1, the sculptures are submerged in the canal next to the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, where Mombaça is currently in residence.

‘sinking could be derives from an ongoing investigation on the radical performativity of sinking, and it unfolds from a sensorial and material engagement with the planet, a transitional mode of inquiry committed to the preservation of possibility.’ – Jota Mombaça

On 15th September 2022, de Appel welcomes Tessa Mars who will collaborate with Jota Mombaça on the performance sinking could be. Following the performance, episode 1 will be open for ten consecutive days at de Appel, 16 September – Sunday 25 September 2022, 12:00-18:00.

Jota Mombaça is an interdisciplinary artist whose work unfolds in a variety of mediums. The sonic and visual matter of words plays an important role in their practice, which often relates to anti-colonial critique and gender disobedience. Currently, they have been interested in researching elemental forms of sensing, anti-colonial imagination and the relation between opacity and self-preservation in the experience of racialized trans artists in the Global Art World. Their work has been presented in several institutional frameworks, such as the 32nd and 34th São Paulo Biennale (2016 and 2020/2021), the 22nd Sydney Biennale (2020), the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018) and the 46th Salon Nacional de Artistas in Colombia (2019).

Tessa Mars is a Haitian visual artist that uses storytelling and image making as transformative tools for survival, empowerment and healing. In her recent work she investigates migration, errantry and ways of belonging that challenge dominant narratives about people in "the margins". Through simple audio recordings, paintings and papier mâché objects Mars envisions the spiritual space as a continuum that connects people and land through time. A space where reality is shaped by need, by intuition and the very retelling of the experience. Her work is currently part of the exhibition Who Tells a Tale adds a Tail at the Denver Art Museum in Denver.