What do you know about street names of streets in which you move every day or where you may even live?

In collaboration with the OOSTCAST project, Hotel Arena invites you to learn more about the history behind street names in East, and the underexposed stories associated with this. OOSTCAST consists of a walking route, a podcast about street names and 7 illustrations by artist Fré Calmes that can be seen in Hotel Arena.

Street names are important because of their everydayness. They can remind you of happy or unhappy times. The Linnaeusstraat, Vrolikstraat, Dapperstraat and Camperstraat; a selection of names of streets in Amsterdam Oud-Oost where Hotel Arena is located. These streets are named after men who had a bad image of Fré’s African ancestors. Fré responds to the stories behind these street names from the perspective of a black artist.

Since Fré lives in the Netherlands, street names have taken on a different meaning for him. In this exhibition, Fré wants to take you into the history behind these street names and show how he looks at these streets and buildings now.

You can scan two QR codes for each work in the exhibition: one with information about the scientist named in the street names and several other locations in the East district. The second QR code is a Dutch spoken explanation by the artist Fré about the work in question.

OOSTCAST, Colonial OUD-OOST, until 28 July, Hotel Arena, ‘s-Gravesandestraat 55