The associate artist for the Holland Festival in 2023 is singer, composer and visual artist ANOHNI. The festival will feature new and existing work by her. ANOHNI and the festival are working on, among other things, a new, large-scale project with multimedia and movement in the Gashouder in Amsterdam.
Since 2019, the Holland Festival has worked annually with one or two associate artist(s). In addition to their work, the festival also highlights themes that are meaningful to them, as well as artists related to them. Alongside this program with and around the associate artist(s), the Holland Festival presents work by other prominent and relevant artists. Previous associate artists were Angélique Kidjo and Nicolas Stemann in 2022, Gisèle Vienne and Ryuichi Sakamoto in 2021, Bill T. Jones in 2020 and Faustin Linyekula and William Kentridge in 2019.
About ANOHNI's role as associate artist
Taking the stage herself is not ANOHNI's highest priority; she sees her role as associate artist more as an intermediary: "I look forward to working with the Holland Festival in 2023, because it gives me the opportunity not only as an artist but also as a thoughtful participant in programming to raise questions that are central to my work: What is really happening? Can we imagine a change in our trajectory, with more feminine, less patriarchal forms of governance? Can we as Europeans acknowledge that our legacy of global conquest, slavery and resource extraction has driven the earth to a breaking point? And can each of us find the humility within ourselves to ask for help? As an artist, I have explored the emotional, psychological and spiritual consequences of our proximity to ecological collapse. I try to let the weight of the disaster we are causing sink in. To embrace the discomfort. Let us be brave and make space in our imagination for the empirical global facts we are now confronted with. Let us seek contact with those who know how to have a more symbiotic relationship with the rest of the natural world, and ask them to be our guides and lead us."
2023 marks the fifth year in which the Holland Festival collaborates with one or two associate artists in developing part of the program. That collaboration brings many new, interesting themes and perspectives to the festival each year. We have had inspiring conversations with ANOHNI and look forward to bringing her work, and the work of artists she admires, to Amsterdam.
Emily Ansenk, director Holland Festival
ANOHNI appeared at the Holland Festival three times before. In 2009 she created a unique orchestral program with the Metropole Orkest featuring, among other things, songs from the album The Crying Light. In 2012 she was seen in Bob Wilson's production The Life and Death of Marina Abramovi? and performed the program Cut the World with the Metropole Orkest.