Exhibition: The best of not yet graduates, Het Langhuis Zwolle

An exhibition with the whole class. We, as third year students of the Visual Arts and Design Teacher study program. For about a week we exhibited our work in the Langhuis in Zwolle. A wonderfull and characteristic building in the center of Zwolle. We arranged everything ourselves, the location, the crowdfunding, the opening and finnisage. What a great experience!

Artist Statement

The inspiration of my work can always be found in nature. Nature is a very big concept and can mean many different things. Thus nature is the universe, the entirety of plants and animals as perceived by natural sciences. It is “the landscape”, “mother nature”, “the outdoors” and “free nature”. In these natural phenomena I think of grand waterfalls, the forest near me, the wind that always blows and the rain that dribbles down or falls from the sky and makes life possible for the plants, trees and animals. And not unimportantly: for people.

In my visual work I am working with the experience I have in nature. In relation to time and the contrast between nature and culture. Experience is central to this. I have an experience in nature, and I capture that experience through film or photography. A large part of the work comes alive through a physical action in nature. I do this with all kinds of different materials that I encounter there, such as sand, branches, burnt wood and water.

My body is very important in experiencing nature. Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty says that you see with your whole body, not just your eyes. Take an apple, for example. When you see an apple, you immediately know that it is, most of the time, crunchy, what it will taste like and what the inside looks like. So it is very associative, because of your memories of an apple you know what it looks like. You are not a camera, a feeling- and memory-less thing, you are a human being. And people perceive the world around them from and with the body. This is also what I do with my visual work. I have an experience, I can feel the sand between my toes or the cold water on my skin. And in that way I see, I experience. And I try to convey this experience.