Monument commemorating The Hague's transatlantic slavery past

In 2025, The Hague welcomes the monument commemorating the transatlantic history of slavery. The memorial titled Remember Our United Beginning was designed by artist Buhlebezwe Siwani and is located on the Lange Voorhout in the heart of the city's governmental center. With this work, The Hague gains a permanent site where the ancestors of descendants who were victims of the transatlantic slave trade can be honored and remembered. During the development of the work, the artist engaged in dialogue with a sounding board group of descendants, local residents, and other stakeholders. The result is a monument that, through its form and symbolism, creates a powerful connection between past and present. Siwani’s work provides a shared space to commemorate and thus contributes to the collective awareness about the legacy of the colonial and slavery past in The Hague. Stroom Den Haag is proud to have contributed to its realization from our role as artistic advisor.

The Artwork
With Remember Our United Beginning, Buhlebezwe Siwani presents a powerful and evocative monument that references the shared past and collective future of The Hague. The sculpture has a footprint of approximately 4.5 by 4.5 meters and stands 2 meters tall. It was executed by Studio RAW in Zwolle. Siwani employs a unique visual language, using a bold composition to depict a landscape from which figures emerge, gazing steadfastly forward—towards the future. Engraved in the base of the metal platform are texts and symbols referencing freedom, belonging, and identity, and evoking the history of the African diaspora. The artwork has a unique location on the Lange Voorhout—a place of great historical and social significance, where the history of The Hague as a center of governance is still palpable.

History
"Through remembrance and celebration, we reflect on our history," said then-Alderman Bert van Alphen in December 2019, when the Hague City Council passed a motion to establish a monument commemorating the abolition of slavery. Previously, the municipality had already conducted research into the history of slavery in The Hague, and in 2022, Mayor Van Zanen formally issued an apology. The monument represents a further step in acknowledging the city’s colonial and slavery-related past. The monument has been realized in cooperation with the Comité 30 juni–1 juli Den Haag, and in collaboration with a broad group of stakeholders.

In 2021, the municipality asked Stroom, as an expertise center in the field of such art projects, to explore the possibilities for establishing a Monument to The Hague’s History of Slavery and Colonial Legacy. Stroom appointed a project leader (Peggy Wijntuin) and set up an advisory committee to address the questions within the municipal brief and to provide recommendations regarding the number of monuments, the location, and the commissioning brief. Chaired by Annet Zondervan, the committee (Lisette van den Berg, Marian Markelo, Lionel Martijn, Edwin Reijntjes, Henry Timisela and Amber Toorop) submitted its report, Monument to The Hague’s History of Slavery and Colonial Legacy, to Alderman Vavier on 30 January 2023.

The municipality adopted most of the committee's recommendations and chose to commission a monument specifically commemorating the transatlantic history of slavery. Based on this, three artists (Buhlebezwe Siwani, Nelson Carrilho, and Tirzo Martha) were invited to create a sketch design, all three of which were presented publicly on 18 December 2023 to a sounding board group of descendants, a number of Lange Voorhout residents and stakeholders. Siwani's design was selected and the municipality awarded her the commission in 2023.