City Talks Amsterdam: Unsung Heroes
Whose stories are remembered and whose are left out? In this edition of CityTalks, we explore how history is shaped, told, and reimagined.
Inspired by art and popular culture, we look at how artists and makers challenge dominant narratives, and (re)write history - not as something fixed in the past, but as something alive, contested, and evolving. Together with our speakers and audience, we reflect how culture shapes the way we see the past - and ourselves.
Location The Bookshop
Duration 60 minutes
Genre Perspective
Language English
We recommend purchasing your ticket in advance. An admission ticket includes a drink voucher.
visual artist
Brian Elstak
Brian Elstak aka ‘your friendly neighbourhood visual artist', is known for his vibrant and bold style infused with elements of pop culture. His multidisciplinary practice spans murals, illustration, graphic novels, installations and more, using storytelling as a way to amplify voices and perspectives he cares deeply about. In 2011, he founded the interdisciplinary creative collective LFMC. Their exhibition Toys Are Us is currently on view at ITA, and explores identity, representation and history through the lens of modern mythology and popular culture. Who gets to be the hero and villain in the stories we grow up with? Do those images stay with us over time or do they change with the context of life?
© Marc Haers
Sociologist
Elly Brink
Elly Brink is one of the first voices in The Netherlands to openly challenge the menstruation taboo. As a recently graduated sociology student, she travelled across the country in the 1970’s and 80s, collecting personal stories, organising gatherings, publishing magazines, and encouraging women to speak about their experiences with menstruation at a time when silence was the norm. Far ahead of her time, Elly framed menstruation not just as a biological fact, but as a social and political issue. Although her work faded to the background, it has recently gained new attention through archival research - revealing how urgently relevant her ideas still are today. What happens when a voice that once struggled to be heard returns and finds a new generation ready to listen and carry it forward?
multidisciplinary artist
Raquel van Haver
Raquel van Haver is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores memory, community, and collective identity. In her ongoing project The Collateral Kin, she reimagines historical group portraits by portraying 120 contemporary Amsterdammers - activists, artists, educators, and community builders shaping the city today. Inspired by 17th-century civic paintings, the work not only celebrates the city’s unsung heroes, but also questions whose stories are remembered, and how collective history can be rewritten from a more inclusive and multi-voiced perspective.
© Bo Bolderink
poet and moderator
Lin An Phoa
CityTalks Amsterdam is hosted by Lin An Phoa, who is a poet, performer and moderator in the cultural field. In her work, she explores vulnerability, resistance, power dynamics and (self-)care culture. Through poetry and conversation, she investigates how to create movement within rigid systems, with the aim to make societal issues tangible, facilitate connection and encourage change.
© Gaby Jongenelen
More in The Bookshop
For bookworms and eager listeners aged 6 and up, we present The Bookshop Kids! Every first Sunday of the month, we transform our soft‑pink Bookshop into a place full of children’s stories where imagination has all the space it needs.
