In The Floor Is Lava; The Walls Have Ears, play, absurdity, and participation become ways of navigating pain, displacement, and resistance, inviting visitors into a series of works that unsettle familiar understandings of history, memory, and power.
UK artist Amarachi Muotoh brings perspectives from her lived experiences in Nigeria, her humanoid bronze lizard sculptures inhabit the gallery as enigmatic "displaced residents." Wandering through the space, these figures embody ruptures in cultural memory while quietly pointing to ongoing conversations around restitution, belonging, and the afterlives of colonial collections.
Their presence guides visitors through participatory works that encourage movement, interaction, and reflection. The works invite audiences to attend to overlooked histories, revolutionary voices, and collective memories that have been omitted from official narratives, asking whose stories are remembered and whose are deliberately silenced.
The Netherlands-based artists Morris Bouwman and Taiyi Yu use childlike playground toys that are transformed into sculptural interventions that sit uneasily alongside themes of violence and militarisation. Familiar objects associated with play become vehicles for questioning how conflict is rehearsed, normalised, and absorbed through everyday life. By placing these objects in unsettling contexts, the works expose the fragile boundary between innocence and systems of violence.
Participation remains central throughout. Visitors are invited to physically engage with works, including an installation where the seemingly simple act of kicking flags becomes both playful and politically charged. Across the exhibition, humour is not an escape from violence or conflict but a critical strategy for disrupting dominant narratives, challenging inherited ideas of nationhood, and imagining forms of solidarity beyond militarised ways of thinking.
Following NGO DEI’s What Why War open call, The Floor Is Lava; The Walls Have Ears brings together two selected artist pairings from the Netherlands and the UK. Through their distinct yet interconnected practices, the artists propose art as more than a response to conflict: a space where alternative narratives can be heard, shared, and collectively reimagined.
𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:
Sat, 8 Aug 2026 | 18:00 - 20:00 (Free)
𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀:
8 – 16 Aug 2026 | 14:00 - 19:00 | Thur to Sun (3 Euro)
𝗩𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲:
NGO DEI Gallery
Westeinde 25, 2512GS, The Hague