Greige Fantastic closing event

19 06 2026

Image: Eugenie Boon

We warmly invite you to the festive closing event of the Greige Fantastic exhibition on Friday, 19 June. Following a unique, ritualistic and musical performance by Eugenie Boon at the old vault, Maia Kenney (curator of Greige Fantastic), Roos van Mierlo (Curator of De Nederlandsche Bank) and Hester Alberdingk Thijm (AkzoNobel Art Foundation) will reflect in a panel discussion on the success of the exhibition and the collaboration, and the value of corporate collections. The discussion will also touch on the role of performance art in contemporary art. After the panel discussion,
you are welcome to view the exhibition while enjoying refreshments.

Eugenie Boon’s performance Kalbas Mayo brings the VBCN OPEN exhibition ‘Greige Fantastic’ to a close. This performance was made possible with the support of the AkzoNobel Art Foundation, as part of its 30-year anniversary celebrations. Greige Fantastic explores the activation of artworks through alternative rituals, and Eugenie does the same in her performance.

Pega Saya I e Kalbas Mayó [Pega Saya and the Big Calabash]

"Stories, like artworks, must circulate. Meaning must move. A work that is only looked at cannot speak."
Eugenie Boon will present a new commissioned performance at the finissage of Greige Fantastic. In this performance, she explores the folklore character of Pega Saya, the youngest child of Anansi, the trickster god in both West-African and Afro Caribbean traditions. Pega Saya is the quiet one, the observer – the burr that sticks to the back of your skirt and sneaks a ride into the bustling kitchen. Together with dancers and musical accompaniment on tambu drums, Boon enters De Nederlandsche Bank with the curiosity and wisdom of Pega Saya to question the presence of artworks in a corporate collection. She approaches the artworks as living presences, containers of imagination, memory, aesthetic charge. Through a performance consisting of a monologue (soliloquy) accompanied by choreographically movements, sounds of tambu and breath, voice,ritual gestures, Pega Saya aims to reopen the channel between artwork, space & stewardship. She awakens what has settled. She restores the aliveness that gets lost when artworks become dormant instead of carriers of meaning. Boon will be invited into the space by Ginevra Petrozzi in order to complete the ritual of healing initiated by Petrozzi for Greige Fantastic.

Friday 19 June 2026
Programme:
15:45-16:00 Doors open
16:00-16:20 Performance by Eugenie Boon and
performers
16:30-17:15 Roos van Mierlo and
Hester Alberdingk Thijm
16:45-17:15 Panel discussion with Maia Kenney,
Ginevra Petrozzi and Eugenie Boon on
the animism of art objects and the role of
folklore and mythology in artistic practice
17:15-18:00 Refreshments/exhibition tour

Please RSVP by sending a message to secretaiaat@vbcn.nl!

Address:
De Nederlandsche Bank
Frederiksplein 61, Amsterdam