Fré Calmes
2026
We are happy to announce that Fré Calmes has received the Thami Mnyele Foundation Award and will stay in the residency in the months of November and December. They were selected in collaboration with CBK Zuidoost. During their stay, they will prepare for their upcoming exhibitions at CBK Zuidoost and Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, as well as participate in Amsterdam Art Week with an Open Studio event at the residency.
Fré Calmes (they/them) was born in 1985 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, grew up in Curaçao, and has been living and working in Amsterdam-East as an artist and designer since 2013. Their artistic practice is shaped by a deeply rooted spiritual and cultural background. Having grown up with influences from both Catholicism and the Voodoo tradition, Calmes explores how spirituality, ritual and ancestral knowledge can shape a contemporary visual art practice.
Fré Calmes,Unconsensual Despair, 2025. Hout en acrylverf, ca. 270 x 250 cm.
Within their work, Calmes develops a unique approach which they call Neo Voodooism: a contemporary interpretation of traditional voodoo rituals, in which spiritual acts are translated into visual art, performance and installation. In this context, rituals do not function as an illustration of a belief system, but as an artistic method through which images, objects and performances emerge from a spiritual encounter