The Gift of the Spider
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| special exhibition foyer, ground floor |
| Duration: 60 min |
| 6 years and older |
| Belongs to: Family Matters |
Weaving workshop and collective collage making. An open invitation to everyone to weave, knit, and engage in anything that involves connecting threads together!! This wall collage and workshop series bring together storytelling, cultural heritage, and participatory weaving to explore the rich cosmology and the female lineages of the Wayuu community in northern Colombia and Venezuela—and to connect them with the wider world. Immerse yourself in the mythical and material worlds of Wayuu women and their vibrant, skillful weaving traditions, and contribute to the collaborative collage! To take part, feel free to join the Sunday workshops “Gift of the Spider.” (QR)
The Aliwaa Collective – Sindri Gonzáles Ipuana (Wayuu weaver), Stefannia Doria (curator from Colombia), and Raquel van Haver (artist from Colombia and the Netherlands) – has created a large collage wall as the foundation for the communal artwork. Contributions by visitors — whether woven, knitted, or crocheted — of the Humboldt Forum, as well as works by the Wayuu weaving community, are continuously added and together form a living artwork.
Participants
Raquel van Haver (1989, Bogotá, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist based between Amsterdam and Colombia, working with painting, sculpture, and installation. Her work explores memory, identity, community, and resilience through layered visual storytelling and unconventional materials. Listening and storytelling are central to her practice, connecting personal narratives with broader cultural histories. Van Haver has presented major solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Spirits of the Soil, 2018), the Bonnefanten Museum (Amo a la Reina, 2020), and the Amsterdam Museum/H’ART Museum (The Collateral Kin, 2025). Other notable solo presentations include David Krut Gallery (New York), Galerie Wedding (Berlin), Jack Bell Gallery (London), and the Textile Museum Tilburg. She collaborates internationally and leads long-term projects such as GlassLab Titambe in Tamale, Ghana. Van Haver is a mentor for the Mondriaan Foundation, a board member of the Holland Festival, and a jury member for De Nieuwe Rembrandt. She is the founder of Studio Raquel van Haver, the 21e Eeuwse Groepsportretten Foundation, the Aliwaa Collective, and GlassLab Titambe.
Sindri González Ipuana is a Wayuu woman, mother, and indigenous leader with training as a Marketing Management Technologist and strong experience in cultural entrepreneurship. From 2017 to 2020, she served as Manager at AKUMAJA, administering community visits and leading prior consultations with Wayuu artisan women. She has extensive experience managing productive projects related to Wayuu weaving, artisan production, and the preservation of cultural traditions. Between 2020 and 2023, she worked as Projects Coordinator with Communities at Perla Ancestral, overseeing artisanal production initiatives. She served as Legal Representative of the WAN Foundation from 2023 to 2024. In 2024, she became President of the Ethnic Women’s Association ASOMUETNICA. She speaks Wayuunaiki and Spanish. She holds a Marketing Management Technologist degree from SENA (2016–2018). Sindri González Ipuana is committed to the empowerment of ethnic women and indigenous communities.
Stefannia Doria is a curator as well as a communications and cultural manager with over fifteen years of professional experience in museums, cultural institutions, and digital cultural projects. From 2010 to 2021, she worked as a curator at the Bolivarian Museum of Contemporary Art in Santa Marta, Colombia. Since 2019, she has been the founder and digital entrepreneur of the cultural project Lunáteaca, Historias de Té. Between 2021 and 2023, she worked as curator for the Wayuu Community Weaving Project at the Textile Museum in the Netherlands. In 2023, she taught as a professor at the University of Magdalena.
From 2024 to 2025, she undertook curatorial responsibilities for the project The Collection Resists at Missie Museum in the Netherlands, as well as responsibility for communications, design, and logistics for the 12th International Conference on Artificial Reefs and Aquatic Habitats (CARAH) in Colombia. In parallel, since 2024 she has been working as curator of transmedia content for the Ministry of Culture and the R101 Theatre Foundation.
Stefannia Doria holds a Master’s degree in Museology (Fine Arts) from Spain and a Bachelor’s degree in Social Communication and Journalism from Colombia. Her areas of focus include curatorial practice, cultural communication, community-based projects, and digital mediation formats.
Dagmar Rehse is the responsible for the weaving, crochet and knitting workshops in February, March and April. She a textile artist and weaver based in Berlin. Since 2013, she has been running handgewebt in berlin in the Wedding district. The textile studio PA58, located in the courtyard at Prinzenallee 58, serves as a production and working space for handwoven textile products.
In addition to her artistic and craft-based production, handgewebt in berlin offers weaving courses and instruction as she does now in Humboldt Forum.