Exhibition Roffa's creators | Stacii en Chelsea

Where and when do you feel at home? Chelsea and Stacii documented Rotterdammers with a bicultural background. Which customs and traditions do you adopt in your daily life? How do you celebrate birthdays with your mother’s and your father’s family? And when you look in the fridge, for example, how different is what your two sets of grandparents keep there?

This super diverse city of Rotterdam is home to people with roots across the entire world. Creative director Chelsea Breur and documentary photographer Stacii Samidin set out to investigate how your background defines you, and which influences you draw from your surroundings. The two have developed the online photo series Home for the World Museum, adding a new photograph of a Rotterdammer each month. 

Do you want to be photographed by Chelsea and Stacii and do your roots lie outside the Netherlands? Then send an e-mail to: communicatie@wereldmuseum.nl.

The father of Baggi Summer and her grandmother Mirsada have experienced the war and death up close in Bosnia. Since then something has completely changed her grandmother. Her world has become smaller and consists of only her family and the love she wants to give her home. The best thing was that Summer's Dutch grandmother Suzan and mother Kim find it so impressive how her Bosnian grandmother loves her so much and that she really lives for Summer. While the love for Summer may be different but certainly just as strong. "We had never seen such a loving family before, and Summer has this with both grandmas where she can always play and has no idea how happy she is."

Oemar has a Dutch father named Henk and a Hindustani mother called Trees. As a result he’s been raised in two different church traditions: his father’s Reformed Free Church and his mother’s Evangelical Brotherhood. The basics are the same, but they’re sometimes expressed rather differently. Oemar never made a conscious choice, but ended up at the church where he felt most at home. Oemar believes his immediate surroundings made him more Dutch, but the older he’s become, the more he’s become intrigued by his Hindustani roots. He sees his mixed background as enriching, for it gives him the feeling he’s experienced more of the world.

Zina is photographed her with her Dutch mother Dien. Although she also lived for a time with her Saudi Arabian father in Jeddah and immersed herself in the culture there, she still feels most at home in her mother’s flat in Rotterdam. After living with her father for a while she began to miss the Dutch way of doing things. But what she does see as very special about Arab culture is the mutual respect in society – a respect her father also taught her and brought with him to the Netherlands.

Nori is two years old and lives with her Moroccan mother Meryem and her Surinamese father Imro. Meryems mother Najate visits often to babysit Nori. The different backgrounds have led to the emergence of a new culture around the table at Nori’s house, with influences from both mum and dad’s side. Her parents feel this is typical of Rotterdam, where many different cultures come together and interact daily. Meryem and Imro feel it’s important that Nori learns to embrace the city’s cultural diversity and to accept everyone. This dinner table isn’t Moroccan or Surinamese; it stands for Rotterdam – and that’s our home!
 

Mees is one and a half and has a Dutch father and a Moroccan mother. When he visits his grannies both of them read to him from his favourite books. Granny Marieke says: “Moroccan hospitality is very different from ours. The entire family can suddenly arrive on your doorstep.” To which granny Rkia replies: “Dutch hospitality is so nice! At least they phone before they come to visit.”  Both grannies agree how special it is that Mees can feel so at home in two different cultures.