Image 1: Nicholas Odhiambo Mboya
Image 2: Suy Lan Hopmann, Photo: Andrea Preysing
Decolonize–art–perspectives
Talk with Suy Lan Hopmann & Nicholas Odhiambo Mboya
In cooperation with fluctoplasma festival
Saturday, 25 October 2025, 5 pm
Free admission
As part of the fluctoplasma festival’s conference tilting structures, artist Nicholas Odhiambo Mboya and curator Suy Lan Hopmann will discuss institutional decolonisation processes. Together, they will reflect on the extent to which artistic strategies can contribute to the examination of colonial history, how colonial and decolonizing experiences can be expressed in aesthetic and structural approaches to work, and what is needed for institutions to not only take up decolonial practices in terms of content, but also to anchor them sustainably and structurally.
The starting point for the conversation is Nicholas Mboya’s exhibition Utopia – Dystopia. In his multimedia works, the Hamburg-based artist addresses socio-political realities in his home country of Kenya alongside experiences of the African diaspora in Germany.
The event is being held in cooperation with the fluctoplasma festival, which will take place from 23 to 26 October 2025, using art to create a space for discourse and diversity – 96 hours for a diverse urban society.
Suy Lan Hopmann is a curator at the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin and works on memory culture(s), decolonisation, racism and migration, as well as gender and queerness. Previously, she was project officer for the decolonisation of Hamburg at the city’s Ministry of Culture and curator for special projects and diversity at the Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK). She is a board member of ICOM Germany, a member of the ICOM Working Group Decolonisation and a trustee of filia.die frauenstiftung. She studied Chinese studies, gender studies and sociology and worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Chinese Politics and Economics as well as at the Collaborative Research Centre 700 at Freie Universität Berlin.
Nicholas Odhiambo Mboya studied Fine Arts at the Mwangaza School of Fine Arts Kisumu and at the HFBK Hamburg. His works have been exhibited at the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, JO (2025), at ICAT, Hamburg, DE (2024), in the Falckenberg Collection, Hamburg, DE (2024), as part of the Fluctoplasma Festival, Hamburg, DE (2021), at the MARKK Museum am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Künste der Welt, Hamburg, DE (2021), and at the Alliance Francaise, Nairobi, KE (2018). He lives and works in Hamburg.