As I headed towards Otemba: Daring Women I tried recalling the last time I went to a performance by myself. It was with confusion that I realized this would be my first time. The realization made me feel more curious and excited than nervous, curious about who I would meet, what new insights I would gain. If you, like me, have also never been to the theater by yourself, I wouldn’t recommend doing it for the first time at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t Ij. Getting there is a disorienting experience. The building is clearly visible from the moment one exits Amsterdam Centraal, yet the closer you think you get the more stairs spawn around you, sending you in many different directions, stopping only once you’ve taken your seat at the grote zaal. It really messes with the overly self-aware mind; am I going the right way? Is the way actually really obvious and I just can’t see it? Will the stairs ever end?
I was among the first to enter the zaal, eager to put an end to my disorienting adventure. However, as more people started taking their seats around me I couldn’t help but notice two things: a) there were less than a dozen people under the age of 50 and b) everybody spoke Dutch. I felt like an advanced life form that was able to conjure a kind of convincing blond-hair, blue-eyed disguise in order to blend in with people that looked nothing like her and spoke a language only minorly decipherable. Because of this feeling, it took me a moment to realize that the singers were performing in English. Thankfully Otemba started with a very expository introduction, giving me some time to adjust to both the premise and the medium of music theater. The character Kirana Diah is “unlike most conservators,” she “talks colour,” while the character Miro the AI specialist is starting to realize that there are more shades between “one and zero.” (Programmaboekje, 14) These characters introduce two conflicting discourses in the art world: the nuanced understanding of colour as a shifting collection of shades, versus the understanding of colour as existing between the humanly incomprehensible extremes of black and white. This is quickly framed as a metaphor for the racism that drove the VOC, stimulating the Dutch wealth through a thriving slave market.
The painting Kirana and Miro are working on restoring is titled “Pieter Cnoll, Cornelia van Nijenrode, their daughters and two enslaved servants” painted by Jacob Coeman in 1665. The performance is especially interested in Cornelia as a historical figure and personality, and it expressed this interest by performing her, giving her arias and a stage presence where she is allowed to narrate her story to Kirana. The performance drew an overt link between the two women “I was like Cornelia,” (22) says Kirana “We’ve a lot in common…two wanderers looking for their next step” says Cornelia (27). It’s straightforward: colonialism has transcended time, impacting both women in similar ways, yet they both rose to their circumstances, continuing to battle when the world wanted to suppress them. The women have dropped their comically large, black and white costumes by the end of the play embracing complexity as they exit the institution of the museum together. The operatic medium is well-suited to the messages of the performance. Cornelia’s performance is almost completely in Japanese, and in a distinctly different style than Kirana’s performance, a choice that adds the texture of time and distance to the interactions between the two characters.
I want to be clear about my support of this message, my support of stories that confront colonial pasts, especially having these stories featured in a time of celebrating 750 years since the foundation of Amsterdam. I also hope it is clear that my cultural background puts me at an emotional and political distance from these conversations. I think Otemba would have benefited from being marketed towards teenagers, as an empathetic introduction to these confronting conversations. If the comparison between the two women was framed like an entrance point to a conversation about how personally colonialism can impact someone, even after a long time. However, the way I saw it, the play did not emphasize enough the complicated relationship Cornelia had with her slaves, her heritage and both of her husbands. Cornelia defends Cnoll, describing him as someone who loved his slaves, saw them as part of his family and personally requested Coeman to draw them into the family portrait, replacing the flower pots on the left end of the canvas. This is essentially all we learn about Cnoll, the end of his characterization. We don’t see that the slaves are painted behind Cornelia, whereas the daughters are painted behind Cnoll. We are not invited to think about this choice as perhaps a reflection of how Cornelia is seen as closer to the slaves than her own daughters, who would have been the legal property of their father. This painting, as with many paintings produced at this time, reveals something about the dynamics between its inhabitants and the societies they occupied.
I did not expect Otemba to address all of these nuances, but I did expect it to nod at them with some more awareness. However, as I exited the Muziekgebouw, grounded back into my alien-ness, I tried to remember that this is not my fight, not my culture, and I am able to make observations without the pain, oppression, guilt and hurt caused by the Dutch colonial project. It was good for me to watch Otemba: Daring Women because it allowed me to see the personal in a story so removed from my own.