Description
In 2022, with only a handful of museums in The Netherlands left with fossil ties, Fossil Free Culture started targeting The Groninger Museum. The Groninger Museum is sponsored by Gasunie and GasTerra, former daughters of the NAM and companies dedicated to the extraction of fossil gas in Groningen. This practice has damaged houses, farms, and churches that are home to over 170,000 people of the region. In the wake of this rumbling, local communities have been left in a perpetual state of uncertainty and fear. As an attempt to clean up their image, Gasunie and Gasterra continuously make financial contributions to the Groninger Museum.
‘It is the sound of your world collapsing’
On 28 January 2022, a giant crack was projected across the front of the museum’s Golden Hall. ‘It is the sound of your world collapsing’ – the line projected next to the crack, stems from a poem by Subcomandante Marcos, spokesperson for the EZLN, also known as the Zapatistas. The Zapatistas are an Indigenous insurgency group from the Mexican region of Chiapas, active since the 1990s. Fossil Free Culture stands in solidarity with their struggle and their fight for justice.
The End of Possibilities / Unmask(ed)
In April of the same year, artist Marit Westerhuis invited Fossil Free Culture to perform a grieving ritual during the opening speech in which she opened her new solo exhibition in the museum and addressed the museum board.
Burn Your Bridges & Colonial Gift
Again in July, Fossil Free Culture installed a massive banner on the bridge just in front of the museum, reading ‘May the bridges you burn light the way forward. It’s time to break up with gas.’ The latest artistic intervention, Colonial Gift, underscores the need for a decolonial perspective on the climate crisis. ‘Groninger Museum has the moral obligation to break up with gas.’
