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De Kroon (The Crown)

Kymani Ceder

tegenboschvanvreden, Amsterdam

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Title
De Kroon (The Crown)
Gallery
tegenboschvanvreden, Amsterdam
Year
2019
Duration
5 min 38 s

In 2018 racist statements were made about Afro-textured hair on the Bubbles & Glosss how. It goes without saying that this caused a lot of commotion. Kymani Ceder, in collaboration with Robin Ramos, wrote a poem for this as a positive representation by, from and for Afro Dutch people. With this film they wanted to liberate themselves from these chains on the day after Liberation Day. Ceder filmed this poem as a result of a study assignment with the theme family. What does family mean to us? She chose ‘black hairstyles’ as a starting point, because historically it implies a community of several tribes and is a way of being in touch with the ancestors until today. The film works as a time machine in a paradoxical decolonial way that takes you on a journey through the legacy of this tradition of hair and connects the present and the past with each other as through weaving. The film is a re-enactment of history played by Afro-Dutch people of the present: how do Afro-Dutch people experience their identity after a physical alienation has taken place from the continent of Africa? How do they relate to their hair now? And how does Ceder, as an Afro-Dutch filmmaker, relate to this film? ‘De Kroon’ (The Crown) is a poetic narrative about the relationship between Afro-Dutch people and their hair. With this work Ceder builds upon the Natural Hair movement that is even more explicitly visible in the American context.

Stills

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Kymani Ceder

Artist
Kymani  Ceder

Kymani Ceder lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is a filmmaker from Amsterdam who graduated this year from the Utrecht School of the Arts. She focuses mainly on poetic films in which she tells stories from an African perspective. Besides making films, she also photographs and creates content for various companies. 

She has exhibited in the show ‘Other Activities’ curated by Hendrik Driessen and Rebecca Nelemans at the ‘Biennal of the Holy Triangle’ (Biënnale van de Heilige Driehoek), Oosterhout in the Netherlands (2021). 

Kymani Ceder also works as a content creator for EYE Film Museum in Amsterdam. She did an internship at Filmgate Miami, USA. Ceder played as an actor in various movie-films, tv productions and commercial advertisements.