Expo: Fragments of Being
Exhibition and programme series by student-in-residence Lola Abbas
- Start date
- 5 November 2026
- End date
- 21 January 2027
- Time
- 16:00
- Location
- BG 3
- Room
- VOX-POP
Music and fashion serve as important means to express ourselves and find a sense of belonging with likeminded peers. But what does it mean to belong to a subculture today, when so much of our social and cultural life takes place online? How do we adopt and rework different influences to make something of our own? And how might we consider identity formation as a process of ‘sampling’ fragments of cultural sources – like a mosaic, or collage of identity? Is subculture, to put it bluntly, still alive?
Across four interactive workshops, participants from diverse backgrounds explored these questions through creative work, reflecting on how they shape and express their identities. The exhibition invites you to encounter their perspectives and discover how they bring fragments of different cultural influences together into their own curations of self. Their work as such offers a tangible contribution to the field of subcultural youth studies, rooted directly in young people’s own experiences and creative expressions.
Participants:
My name, Ajhani, means “to progress through struggle”. I try to let this guide me in staying resilient through all of life’s tests and transitions. I am from New York, and of Antiguan descent. I love plants and nature, being active, traveling and learning about new cultures, and of course fashion and thrifting! I am very passionate about social justice advocacy and the healing power of being in community.
My name is Alexia, I was born in Spain in Spanish-Russian family. I came to Amsterdam to study a Masters of Film Studies, and I'm in love with every visual form of cinema. My art world is very colourful and diverse, but I keep black and grey colour scheme for my outer shell.
I am a Swiss-Iranian urban planning student at the University of Amsterdam. My style is drawn to romantic, whimsical atmospheres, layered textures and a touch of absurdity. I like mixing softness with darker details, and I treat fashion, music and visual culture as playful ways of exploring and expressing different sides of myself.
My name is Deeya and I am on a mission to go down the rabbit hole of everything, explore every hobby, and every place. I recharge myself through dancing until the last song on the dance floor, and late night walks across Amsterdam.
I value friendship, am deeply passionate about social issues, and have always been very assertive about my values and beliefs. I believe in love, as my Mom taught that to be my religion in a non-religious household. Aside from that, I love animals, photography, cd collecting, and finding hidden 1 euro gems at back-alley thrift stores. I love a good card game and am the type of person that prioritizes chaos and unpredictability over winning.
As a Chinese queer student fighting against state violence, subculture to me is a way to preserve all fragments too precious to lose; may it be a lost activist colleague, or a forbidden life form. I see my identity as bearing the weight of queer resistance and memory.
My decision to participate in Fragments of Being was a spontaneous, but an intentional decision to kick-off a new creative endeavour. My art predominantly explores identity through poetry, hence why working with visual elements of collages, digital soundscape and photography have given me the opportunity to shift perspective and engage with subcultures in daily practice.
I am currently in my second year of Arts and Economics at HKU in Utrecht. I am 20 years old and was born and raised in Delft. Since my teen years, I've been heavily inspired by hip-hop and fashion, especially in how they contribute to each other. I love going to small venue concerts and finding new talent in the hip-hop scene, hearing unpredictable heavy 808 bass tracks is what makes me feel confident and myself.
I’m Valentina. I’m half German and half Italian. I study in the humanities, and I am a big fan of history, art, and culture. I grew up in Italy, exchanged in the US, Greece, and Germany, worked in the Middle East, studied in the Netherlands and Hong Kong, and I can't wait to see where life leads me to next!
Curator Fragments of Being:
Lola Abbas is a graduate of the Research Master’s in Literary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her interests centre on contemporary culture, subcultures and the ways people shape and express their identities through music, fashion and digital media. At VOX-POP, she is currently developing Fragments of Being, a series of workshops and an exhibition exploring self-expression and belonging in an increasingly digital world.
