DJ Lynnée Denise Co-Moderates Conversation with the Otolith Group in the Netherlands

DJ Lynnée Denise and Jamaican Amsterdam based expatriate Tracian Meikle co-moderated a panel discussion with artists reacting to the Xenogenesis exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum. The panel unpacked questions surrounding futurity with the Otolith Group and special guests Caribbean speculative fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson and Dutch Surinamese visual artist Iris Kensmil.

In May 2019, the Van Abbemuseum held Xenogenesis, the first large scale exhibition of The Otolith Group in the Netherlands. The collective was founded by artist Anjalika Sagar and theorist Kodwo Eshun in 2002. Xenogenesis presented artworks produced between 2011 and 2018. The works were displayed in the ten rooms within the old building of the museum. Xenogenesis is named after Octavia Butlers’ Xenogenesis Trilogy which consists of Dawn. Xenogenesis: 1, Adulthood Rites. Xenogenesis: 2 and Imago. Xenogenesis:3. As a pioneering African American female science fiction novelist, Butlers’ award winning novels investigated questions of human extinction, racial distinction, planetary transformation, enforced mutation, generative alienation and altered kinship.