Nene H explores the experiences of her queer, POC community navigating the colonial history of art and culture in Western Europe.
On her recent EP for Live From Earth Klub, Trifecta, Nene H offers up three tributes to cities that hold special significance in her life, reflecting on the places that have shaped and inspired her as an artist. Having channeled her deep love for Istanbul into an homage to Sirän, a rave collective for cultural exchange she co-founded last year, with ‘Ring the Sirän’, and sent up the self-serious European techno scene in her current base of Berlin with ‘Fukken Lie’, here, with ‘Hold Ud, Skat!’, she opens her heart to Copenhagen, a city she feels accepted her at a time when she felt most lost.
“The last of these three videos is dedicated to Copenhagen, where I found so many brown, queer sisters that inspired me so much, living their own truth, creating their own spaces, reality and culture in Europe, with experiences that are peculiar to our existence in Western European countries and thriving because of it, nevertheless,” she explains. “It became a very powerful visual language surrounding this EP and this became such a personal and important project for me.”
“The story is about how we as POCs often find ourselves away from our origins and experience the world through a westernised perspective,” adds director Noah Umur Kanber. “We see our history in stolen and sold objects seen through museum glasses. The community we create is not only for survival but also for understanding. We see each other and we help each other to find the lost pieces in ourselves, reclaiming the relics’ cultural heritage and creating the new history of our culture.”
Set against an urgent technoid charge, we see in small moments of joy between friends the texture of everyday solidarity within their community, yet the process by which this is made into a spectacle for those of us in the audience is not lost on anyone. Throughout, the camera is turned back on us, a subversive act of confrontation that connects the colonial practises of the museum with the Eurocentric standards of the art scenes within which Nene H thrives regardless.
‘Hold Ud, Skat’ is taken from Trifecta, out now on Live From Earth Klub. You can find Nene H on Instagram.
Hold Ud, Skat! Credits:
Director – Noah Umur Kanber
DOP – Cat P Coleman
Producer – Benjamin Muasya
Editor – Ribka M. Pattinama Coleman
Colorist – Ribka M. Pattinama Coleman
Steadicam – Lars Noerlund
Focus puller – Neffi Kristensen
Production assistant – Josva
Cast:
Nene H
Sahar Jamil
DJ Nah Care
Sofia Skir
Sham
Kimia Farhadian
Thank you – Davids Samling, Diamond Rice
Watch next: Charlie Osborne – Bury-Man-Lane
