From Black to Blue?

The 6th of December in Holland stands for some as a celebration of one of the most beautiful and joyous festivities in the Dutch tradition, and, for others, it represents the cyclic recurrence of epistemic violence against bodies racialized as "black". The phenomenon to which I am referring is the celebration of "Sinterklaas" and his companion "Zwarte Piet". Whilst the country tries to find alternative solutions for "Zwarte Piet"’s appearance in order to restore and maintain the tradition, contemporary artists challenge this notion of representation. Departing from this example, the paper will not only reflect on the various strategies of neglect and denial that manifest what has been identified as an ongoing “Dutch Colonial Amnesia”, it will contrast this dominant position with a reading of various art-pieces by Afro-European artists in order to stress not only their often marginalized practices but to highlight the rich potential these European subjects pose through the questions that they lay bare in their art-pieces. The unavoidable presence of a younger generation of people of color calls not only for a change in the representation of the “national” but also poses quintessential questions concerning the notion of belonging and its ontologies.