“Whose Voices Are Heard?”: Reclaiming Marginalised Narratives Through the Works of Judith Westerveld

Who is heard, seen, and remembered in the stories we tell? What role can art play in foregrounding histories and perspectives that are missing, erased and silenced in a postcolonial world? These questions lie at the core of artist Judith Westerveld’s work. Her practice, grounded in research, spans across film, audio-visual installations, and performance, consistently exploring the intersections of colonial legacies, language, and memory. 

In her œuvre, distributed by and part of LI-MA’s collection, she invites viewers to reconsider whose voices are heard and whose are erased from historical narratives. In A Few Common Phrases (2018), most recently screened in September 2024 during LI-MA Presents: Remembering Otherwise, curated by belit sağ, she depicts a practice session of the Khoekhoegowab language, highlighting not only the loss of Indigenous languages but also challenging the colonial imposition of Dutch as the dominant language—a gesture toward reimagining history and reclaiming forgotten voices.

Her most recent film, The Sending of the Crows (2024), set to premiere soon, provides a unique and rare insight into the impact of the Dutch colonisation of South Africa through the retelling of a powerful Southern African |xam legend, originally told in 1874 by Dia!kwain in Cape Town, in which three crows are sent out by |xam women to find their husbands, only to learn that they have been killed by Dutch colonial settlers. The film intertwines this tragic tale with a spoken word sound piece by South African artist Blaq Pearl (Janine Overmeyer), reflecting on another version of the story where the crow brings the men back to life. 

Judith Westerveld, The Sending of the Crows, 2024, 15:27, in collection: LI-MA.

Westerveld is an artist whose practice spans film, audio-visual installations, photocollage, and performance, exploring the intersections of colonial history, language, and archival material. Growing up in both the Netherlands and South Africa, Westerveld’s dual upbringing in these countries—tied by a shared colonial past—profoundly shapes her work and grants her a rare perspective. Her research-based art practice, grounded in both conceptual and material investigations, sheds light on erased, silenced, and marginalised perspectives in postcolonial narratives, often focusing on endangered languages and untold stories from the Dutch and South African histories. 

Her practice explores the tension between the visible and the hidden, the spoken and the silenced. Through intricate layering of archival footage, personal memories, and language, in spoken, written, and embodied form, she reframes historical narratives to include marginalised voices. Gathering a multiplicity of perspectives and interpretations that are historical and contemporary, public and private, her works intertwine the worlds of facts and stories. With her work she aims to address and reflect upon the multiple ways the colonial past continues to impact the present.

Judith Westerveld, A Few Common Phrases, 2018, 05:40, in collection: LI-MA.

Can you share a bit about your personal and academic background, and how it has influenced your artistic practice?

I grew up in the Netherlands and South Africa. In 1997, when I was eleven years old, my family emigrated to South Africa. I came back to the Netherlands to study fine art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, followed by a Master in Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam, graduating in 2013. The knowledge that the two countries where I grew up and continue to work and live, are bound together by a violent colonial past that is remembered in entirely different ways, fuels my artistic practice. In South Africa, it is very much part of the present in geographical, socio-political, linguistic and emotional ways. In the Netherlands, this past is still often diminished and sidelined, or worse, totally left out of the public debate concerning coloniality and slavery, also in the current conversations about apologies and reparations to previous colonies.

Over the years, I have developed an interest to personally, as well as historically research these connections and disconnections in an artistic way through my work, and express them in the films, audio visual installations, photocollages and performance-based works that I make, often in collaboration with others. The strong conceptual and research-based foundation that my educational background has provided me with inspires me to do this through artistic research.

Your practice is informed by artistic research. Can you elaborate on this?

To me artistic research means doing research in and through art. Practical making of artworks goes hand in hand with theoretical reflection, and the boundaries between making, thinking, writing and sharing are porous and fluid in my art practice. Research plays a role in my art practice in several areas: in reading and writing texts, in my interactions with archives, in my dialogues with others, and in my experiments in the studio. Over the years I have developed an understanding of the knowledge that the making process brings to light, as well as learned the importance of embedding my art practice in a broader discourse. 

Time and again, in the projects I have undertaken, sensorial awareness, material properties, dialogues, collaborations, missing scraps of archival information, or theoretical questions, always reveal new insights that push the work forward in a direction unknown at the start. I am particularly interested in the relations between the archive, the voice and the narrative in order to make visible and audible perspectives that are missing, erased and silenced in colonial histories and their legacies. The artworks themselves also capture and reveal knowledge in the form of stories, (oral) histories and socio-political perspectives that are shared. The investigations that are part of the making process and the knowledge harboured in the artworks themselves, inform my artistic research.

Central in your video works are the brutal legacies of colonialism and the shared history of the Netherlands and South Africa. Language, especially marginalised, endangered, or extinct languages, is also a leitmotif. How did these themes come to the forefront of your practice, and what significance do they hold in your work?

In my research-based art practice I focus on the impact of the colonial past on the present, particularly regarding the history of the Netherlands and South Africa. Growing up both in the Netherlands and South Africa, and living and working there over the past years, has made me keenly aware of the multitude of perspectives that exist beyond official historical narratives and national identities. ‘Whose voices and stories are heard and seen, remembered, and historicised in a postcolonial world, and whose are not, and why?’ are the central questions that inspire my art practice. With my films, audio visual installations, photocollages and performance-based work, I aim to make visible and audible perspectives that are missing, erased and silenced, often in collaboration with others. Language in spoken, written and embodied form, as well as memory, oral history and archival material are thereby recurring elements that shape my work.

Since 2018, I have specifically focused on marginalised, endangered and extinct languages of the San and Khoekhoe people within the context of the Dutch colonisation of South Africa. I collaborated with storytellers, heritage activists and people that are involved in language revitalisation programmes. And I took language classes in Khoekhoegowab, inspired by the question ‘What if the Dutch colonists would have learned to speak San and Khoe languages instead of imposing their own languages upon those they encountered?’ and ‘What would I experience if I were to learn such a language now?’ This multilingual and collaborative endeavour resulted in several artworks that document and reimagine pivotal moments in Dutch and South African colonial history and introduce perspectives that intervene in dominant historical narratives. The films A Few Common Phrases, Sida Îtse, and Kulimatji (all 2018) that are part of the LI-MA collection, are examples of that. In these works, I also explored how accounting for my own position could become part of the content of an artwork, as I was both in front of the camera and behind it. 

Judith Westerveld, Message from Mukalap, 2021, 14.41 min, in collection: LI-MA.

I also do a lot of archival research in South Africa and the Netherlands and work with archival documents, audio files, photos and objects in my artworks. For example, my latest film The Sending of the Crows (2024), that is part of LI-MA’s collection, is based on two narratives in the San language |xam that form part of the Bleek and Lloyd Archive, that was compiled in the 1870s and 1880s in Cape Town, South Africa. The film retells the tragic legend told by Dia!kwain, of three crows sent out by |xam women to find their husbands, only to learn that they have been killed by a Boer commando (Dutch colonial settlers). It is interwoven with a spoken word sound piece by South African singer and poet Janine Overmeyer aka Blaq Pearl, that reflects on another version of the same story told by !kweiten ta ||ken (Dia!kwain’s sister), in which the crow tells the stones that have buried the men to part and the men return home. Through animation and a rich soundscape, the film brings these narratives into the present, shedding light on the on the violence of Dutch colonialism in South Africa and its legacy, as well as the resilience of the |xam people and their descendants.

Another film that I would like to highlight that was also inspired by archival material is Message from Mukalap (2021) (also part of LI-MA’s collection). At the core of the film lies a unique sound recording that captures a spoken message from a man named Mukalap, recorded around 1936 in South Africa. Mukalap speaks in the Khoe language !ora, a language that is now no longer spoken. In his message he calls on a European audience to just for once listen to his beautiful language, and to listen to him. The recording was played at the 1938 Third International Congress of Phonetic Sciences in Ghent. His message is not only an urgent appeal for recognition, he also asks the audience to respond and send a message in return. My film is a response to his request. Constructed as a dialogue, I reply to Mukalap speaking in the Dutch, English and Afrikaans language, as well as fragments of !ora. The multitude of languages and translations that make up the dialogue that unfolds between us resound the legacies of colonialism. Recording my reply to Mukalap using the same sound technology and media that were used to record and store his message and reproduce his voice some 80 years ago, is an integral part of the film. Listening is another important element in the film. Playing back Mukalap’s message on a grand E.M.G. gramophone became a way of resounding his voice in the present and personified Mukalap to me.

What is your connection to LI-MA? 

LI-MA has been distributing my films since 2016, when I made my first film entitled The Remnant, that was commissioned for the exhibition Re(as)sisting Narratives curated by Chandra Frank at Framer Framed, and then went on to premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2017. Since then, film, sound and performance grew to become important media for me to capture and document, give voice and resound languages, stories and perspectives that are missing, erased or silenced in dominant colonial historiographies. I’m happy to say that many of these works have made their way into LI-MA’s collection and thanks to their efforts in distribution they have been screened all over the world, as well as locally in the Netherlands, at film festivals and exhibitions.

How can interested viewers follow your work and stay updated on your activities? Are there any upcoming projects or exhibitions you would like to highlight?

On my website www.judithwesterveld.nl one can see an overview of my works and see which exhibitions and film festivals my works are part of, or where I am giving an artist talk or lecture. I also share this information and fragments of my working process on instagram under the name @judewest. My work is represented by gallery Lumen Travo in Amsterdam, and my films are distributed by LI-MA, so also check their websites and social media accounts for updates.

Judith Westerveld is LI-MA's artist in focus for autumn 2024. To find out more about her work, visit our website or our online catalogue.