The exhibition Voëlvry takes its name from the Afrikaans Anti-Apartheid music movement that Kendell Geers was part of in the late 1980’s. Geers played keyboards and tape loops for the underground band KOOS that was featured on the original Voëlvry album that launched a movement that Max du Preez described as a significant movement in every social, political, cultural and musical sense of the word (Vrye Weekblad). Voëlvry translates to ‘Vogelvrij’ in Dutch or ‘Outlaw’ in English. The exhibition invites us to meditate on the question, what does freedom mean in 2021?
What does freedom mean in the aftermath of the pandemic lock downs, social distancing, Black Lives Matter protests, climate change with unprecedented heat waves, wildfires, floods, social media panic and plagues of fake news? The answer lies in art because it can announce what we don’t want to hear and reveal what we are afraid to see. With his tongue firmly in our cheek Geers sharpens his black humour and challenges our definitions of art in the post- Truth era. In Voëlvry, the artist shifts his uniquely charged language of political abstraction and aesthetic protest towards healing by understanding our fragile connection to nature through art.

Amsterdam Art Gallery   capital c