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Casa Blanca tells its story
Yiyi Chen & Edwin Zwakman
14.12.2025 — 08.02.2026Casa Blanca tells its story
Yiyi Chen & Edwin Zwakman
De let’en! – Da it’en!
Casa Blanca tells its story
Yiyi Chen & Edwin Zwakman
14.12.2025 — 08.02.2026Casa Blanca tells its story
Yiyi Chen & Edwin Zwakman
Yiyi Chen & Edwin Zwakman ‘De let’en! – Da it’en! Casa Blanca tells its story’, 4K video, 16:00 min. 2025
De let’en! – Da it’en!
Casa Blanca tells its story
Yiyi Chen & Edwin Zwakman
The Maroons are the descendants of enslaved Africans who managed to escape into the jungles of Suriname, where they formed self-governing communities beyond colonial control. Many decades later, Moengo became the country’s bauxite mining center, constructed in the rainforest by the American company Suralco under Dutch administration. Although the town had schools, churches, a theater, and a public swimming pool, life there remained strictly segregated. Maroons, who carried out most of the manual labor, were required to leave Moengo every day at 5:00 p.m. and return to their villages along the Cottica River. Casa Blanca, the executive villa symbolized Suralco’s wealth and authority.
From 2009 onward, the Kibii Foundation used the building as a cultural center. In 2015, the mines closed. During the pandemic, the aluminum roofing sheets were stolen. Heavy tropical rains and the rapidly advancing jungle caused the building to be reclaimed by nature at an accelerated pace.
During a three-month residency at Tembe Art Studio, Yiyi and Edwin filmed in Casa Blanca almost daily, allowing the building to ‘speak’ through light, sound, and atmosphere. The title De let’en! - Da it’en! — a traditional Maroon call and response that initiates a storytelling ritual — provided the framework for their final presentation: a film, a performance with local artist Seraven Pinas, and a concrete replica of the villa’s billiard table.
Yiyi Chen (1989, China), asks the question ‘what is it for us to be?’ through her paintings. Due to her inborn nature, she feels deeply connected to the spontaneous and insignificant moments in life, where her sense of ‘being’ is rooted. The world is revealed as how it is in her distant view, unembellished and un-staged. The artist is graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, was a finalist of the Royal Award For Modern Painting in the Netherlands and is currently represented by the Josilda da conceição Gallery in Amsterdam.
Edwin Zwakman (1969, Netherlands) is a visual artist whose photography and site-specific sculptural scale-play explore the interaction between reality and fabrication, to subtly uncover uncomfortable truths on power and authorities that are deeply engraved in our collective memory. Zwakman exhibited in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the European Museum for Photography, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, Taipei/Venice Biennials. He currently has a fellowship at the University of Derby, UK, where he teaches photography.
Casa Blanca tells its story
Yiyi Chen & Edwin Zwakman
Exhibition
14.12.2025 — 08.02.2026
Location
West Den Haag in the former American Embassy, Lange Voorhout 102, The Hague
The Maroons are the descendants of enslaved Africans who managed to escape into the jungles of Suriname, where they formed self-governing communities beyond colonial control. Many decades later, Moengo became the country’s bauxite mining center, constructed in the rainforest by the American company Suralco under Dutch administration. Although the town had schools, churches, a theater, and a public swimming pool, life there remained strictly segregated. Maroons, who carried out most of the manual labor, were required to leave Moengo every day at 5:00 p.m. and return to their villages along the Cottica River. Casa Blanca, the executive villa symbolized Suralco’s wealth and authority.
From 2009 onward, the Kibii Foundation used the building as a cultural center. In 2015, the mines closed. During the pandemic, the aluminum roofing sheets were stolen. Heavy tropical rains and the rapidly advancing jungle caused the building to be reclaimed by nature at an accelerated pace.
During a three-month residency at Tembe Art Studio, Yiyi and Edwin filmed in Casa Blanca almost daily, allowing the building to ‘speak’ through light, sound, and atmosphere. The title De let’en! - Da it’en! — a traditional Maroon call and response that initiates a storytelling ritual — provided the framework for their final presentation: a film, a performance with local artist Seraven Pinas, and a concrete replica of the villa’s billiard table.
Yiyi Chen (1989, China), asks the question ‘what is it for us to be?’ through her paintings. Due to her inborn nature, she feels deeply connected to the spontaneous and insignificant moments in life, where her sense of ‘being’ is rooted. The world is revealed as how it is in her distant view, unembellished and un-staged. The artist is graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, was a finalist of the Royal Award For Modern Painting in the Netherlands and is currently represented by the Josilda da conceição Gallery in Amsterdam.
Edwin Zwakman (1969, Netherlands) is a visual artist whose photography and site-specific sculptural scale-play explore the interaction between reality and fabrication, to subtly uncover uncomfortable truths on power and authorities that are deeply engraved in our collective memory. Zwakman exhibited in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the European Museum for Photography, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, Taipei/Venice Biennials. He currently has a fellowship at the University of Derby, UK, where he teaches photography.