Exhibition in Amsterdam: See you at art

This spring I am lucky enough to exhibit again at de Hallen in Amsterdam with See you at Art. The theme this year is ‘Identity’: How do we live in a society of social distancing.

The corona crisis did make me look inward. I was suddenly free of social obligations, spending a lot of my time at home and with my family. I had less commissioned work so I started to look at my free works and thinking I should make a change. The past years my work had been inspired by telling other peoples stories, but now I decided to look at my own.

I never wanted to tell my own story. For several reasons, but mainly because I am not that interesting. Nobody is waiting for my story. When I am writing these blogs, I always wish I had some exciting life: to be a bubbly extravagant artist, impulsive and full of fun. The reality is, that I am a middle aged women, responsible for two girls with little time or money left for fun, travel and impulsivity. I am living the artist life, weekdays between nine and five (or whenever I have to pick up the children). Not that I hate my life, but as you see, it has very little excitement in it.

So, during lock-down, my story became a journey of the mind. Not just my mind, which I find very hard to handle, but also of those of my family. Because you know, blame your parents! I started looking for old pictures of my grandmothers and my aunt, who had passed over the years. I wondered how I was like them and how they dealt with the darkness in their minds. My father’s family were colorful, chaotic characters, my mother’s family sweet but sensible ones. Has this clashed in my mind?

While looking at the pictures I started to make abstract paintings in watercolors and black ink, very instinctively. Then I drew the portraits on the watercolors, making a connection between mind and person. I added questions and things that I could never ask or tell my grandmothers or my aunt.

Now these works are part of my personal story, my struggle to find where I belong. But maybe you recognize something? Or maybe you connect with the words, colors or expressions in a different way. In the end I hope you connect with my art in your own personal way. My story doesn’t have to be yours…

See you at art, until 20th July 2020

This short interview is a fragment of a longer film, made by Lau Rivest for Seeyouatart

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