Eight Cubic Meters by TxT (Textile)

Maria Naidich / Presente!

From January 14 till March 15 Maria Naidich (student of the Textile department) will be showing her work at the Eight Cubic Meters gallery in the Sint Nicolaasstraat in Amsterdam. It is open 24/7.

"Over 5.000 people are kidnapped in Mexico every year. On 26 September 2014, police kidnapped and murdered 43 students of the Rural college San Isidro Burgos in Guerrero, Mexico. We are living with an alarming devaluation of life with big amounts of deaths and violence, as a result of a corrupted government. As a student, as a Mexican, as a human being I feel responsible to protest and spread the information, which is controlled by media, about what is really happening in my country and give support to the people who are living in this situation back in Mexico. I made a video performance at the academy with international students from Iceland, Turkey, Sweden, Russia, Bosnia, Japan, Tunisia, China, the Netherlands and 15 other countries. In the video, each person named out loud the country they are from and the word “present” in their own language.

We are aware, and we are present.

During the performance, we all wore t-shirts with a face of one of the 43 students, each portrait drawn by the student wearing the t-shirt. In this process, students created a connection with an other student they never met and they never will."

For more information about this project, contact Buro Rietveld: buro@rietveldacademie.nl