Under the title Ons Land – Decolonisation, generations, stories, Museum Sophiahof in The Hague opens a semi-permanent exhibition about the decolonisation of Indonesia in December 2021. The exhibition is the second joint project of the Indisch Herinneringscentrum and the Moluks Historisch Museum. Through eight family stories this exhibition sketches the complex and often painful colonial history and the effects of the still ongoing process of decolonisation on our society.
Around two million people currently living in the Netherlands, spanning four generations, each with a unique background of their own, come from the former Dutch East Indies and Indonesia. What all these people have in common is that they or their forebears came to the Netherlands permanently or temporarily, whether by force or not, after the proclamation of the Republik Indonesia.
The exhibition begins in the present. With the often confronting traces of the colonial past and the way they resonate in Dutch society to this day. In Ons Land the visitor travels back in time and is confronted with aspects of the decolonisation of Indonesia through eight family stories. Eyewitness accounts take centre stage. In Ons Land, unique stories are complemented by objects, photographs and film footage often not shown before.
"The Netherlands is home to two million people from the former Dutch East Indies and Indonesia"
To help us understand these family stories, Ons Land takes the visitor to colonial society with its characteristic racial, cultural and social stratification, the Second World War, the Bersiap period and the colonial war, the forced departure from Indonesia between 1945 and 1964, the journey to Europe and the arrival and reception in the Netherlands. At the end of the exhibition the focus turns to the youngest generations: to their lives between there and here, and then and now.
The exhibition does not claim to present the story of decolonisation, but to illuminate it from different perspectives and through the eyes of the tellers. As a snapshot in the ongoing process of working through it, in which new elements also demand attention.
The title Ons Land refers both to the present-day Netherlands and to the country of origin that would continue to play an important role in many ways: in culture, in memory, in identities and communities. Ons Land aims to prompt conversation and reflection on our shared colonial past, on the way it works through the present and on how people deal with it.
