Rianne, Westmaas 2016

This double portrait differs from other drawings I made from nurse Rianne: No skin.

The bed sheet and the fabric of her uniform become subject to the surface now. Her knee bends and both fabrics move along. 

The uniform of the nurse becomes part of a history of painted fabrics in art history. Not a rich sitter's robe though, but a certain sensuality is involved. More to come

faces and fragments

Nurse Nynke in Groningen 2016, work in progress

Again - having stepped in a new portrait project - I bumped into questions regarding representations of the social/political body and the issue of the face. The last weeks I have been drawing after video stills from documentation material of the Visiting Nurses at work. It is as if the movements of the women in other people's homes are a performance. Due to my presence with my camera, the home settings feel like theatre stages. Plus the fact that they 'rehearsed' their work gestures for years already, day in and out.

In theatre faces are hardly visible and the body speaks much more than the mouth and eyes. My drawings are close to the body, in the protected environment of the home. But as soon as i start drawing a face, the drawing stops moving. As if the face is a complete body in itself and needs more breathing space for itself.

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I have found that a fragmented view on another's world provides for air in my work. The script of the complete story lives somewhere under the bright white surface of the passe partout, the protective color of the uniform. My drawing notes during conversation with the nurses and their clients frame the fragments I show to you.

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Possibly my face drawings are not meant for the world outside. As Michael Taussig writes in his book Mimesis and Alterity: in some way or another one can protect oneself from evil spirits by portraying them. I wonder about the good spirits...

balans schetsen

luisterend portret op schapje

Papier plannen

onzichtbare productie van zorg

Videostill Groningen 2015

Als kunstenaar ben ik gewend dat mijn werk bestaat uit een (re)productie van vormen en objecten. Nu mijn onderzoek zich richt op de werkomgeving van de wijkverpleegkundige, wil ik deze productie kritischer bekijken. Wat ik zie in de huizen waar de vrouwen werken is dat hun werk niet zozeer vormen en objecten voortbrengt, maar eerder een autonomie van leven.

Doordat het werk zich afspeelt in de beslotenheid van huizen van cliënten, blijft het bijzonder noodzakelijke en creatieve werk van de vrouwen veelal onzichtbaar voor de buitenwereld. Ik zie hier daarom een opdracht voor mij als buitenstaander een manier te vinden om iets te (re)produceren waarin die autonomie spreekt.

tomatoes and cucumbers never die

This thursday I was welcome to join nurse Ella visit Mrs Z, shortly after she lost her husband. I met them in november last year, to talk about Ella for the Role Model Project. 

The interior of the living room changed due to the absence of the bed in the living room where Mr Z spent his last weeks. 

I went to make coffee in the kitchen and found a note from the husband to his wife on a whiteboard hanging next to the door: Ik hou nog veel van jou, 8-05-2015, niet huilen. Underneath grocery items were written that needed to be bought: tomaten, komkommer. 

The message filled the whole house and went straight for my heart. 

Mrs Z will help me to make a portrait of Ella, who was there four times a day for her husband.  

Working class hands

In almost every art show I went lately I saw imagery of working hands: At the 2015 Venice Biënnale, this years Rijksakademie open weekend and at the current show at SMBA of Antony Pittas.

My concern is not only that my own fascination for hands at work is not so original anymore, but the fact that all the hands I see seem to be working class hands, estheticized for an artist's concept.

I am worried that there is a distance growing between the hands on the screens, the ones that made the video and the people that are buying them, which I presume are not covered in callus.

video fragment Antonnis Pittas

notes

Telephone notes, documentation Role Model project 2015.

I read about some artist a couple of years ago that did a residency in the office world. Let me look up his name….Shit, can't find it. Anyway, what I remember is that he collected post-its around the offices and researched in what way drawing is important in a world without art: the office discourse.
Saskia Janssen also collected other peoples drawing outside her own discourse, in her project with homeless people in Amsterdam in 2006-2008. In shelter Blaka Watra, she discovered that people there were drawing all the time. On notes, on the table surface, on the walls. She also invited the people at the shelter to collect all the so called careless drawings. She published them in an interesting publication: Blaka Watra Spiders, Saskia Janssen, Roma Publications 2009.

Blaka watra centre, picture by Janssen in her book.

My first three meetings with the nurses have past, and I can say there a few points that had my attention. Hands and language through hand gestures; the soft but firm touch of the woman hand with her clients. I have asked one nurse to collect all her telephone notes and doodles. But I also have a set up in mind where I document her on video when she is on the phone for an hour or so.

Nurses and art

Nurses have always impressed me. My parents both started out as nurses, that's how they met. Before I went to art school I highly doubted if an artist is really necessary in this world, compared to a job in care. My generation, from where I come from, is brought up with the idea that one should follow a passion to build one's career - I was one of many thousands arts students graduating in 2009.

In my current practice there is still the question of necessity present. Part of this discussion inspired me to start a project in 2010 for a company in home care, Buurtzorg. I made 5 large interior portraits of their clients. (watch them here) It gave me the opportunity to enter a world that I knew about from my parents and their stories. It learned me that being an artist can be great, also outside of the conventional art world. 

I had set up a construction so that all three parties benefitted from the pieces: The company had large drawings that gave insight to their work field; The clients received a smaller drawing of a favorite object in their house and could hang it in their home; And I had an entrance into hyper private spaces, gaining knowledge on the relationship between artist and model, finding my own role outside the art world as I knew it, and for the first time becoming completely emotionally involved in my work. 

This month I start a new series, commissioned by the almost 10 year old foundation Buurtzorg: Role model. Together with their clients and direct colleagues, I will make portraits of a selection of nurses in the Netherlands. We will make a collection of drawings, photographs, video's and small sculptures around the individual nurse.

During my days with the nurses I will explore my own position as an artist within this private home context. 

Miss Kessel, Damrak Amsterdam 2010. ( She was 103 back then!)

In ear

Bot Fly, 2015. Graphite on paper 

No title, 2015. Oil and watercolor on paper, charcoal. 

Two small drawings and an excerpt of Willem Frederik Hermans' 1969 De laatste resten Tropisch Nederland, pag 50 and 52
'In reality it is dead silent, nothing moves, even the leaves of the palm trees are not moving, because there is no wind. (…) Few plants have purple or red leaves, but mostly everything around you is green, except the white from cut trees, which is shocking in the green like the red of blood on a white skin'. p 50

In this 60's book famous Dutch writer Hermans reports on his visit to the Antilles with his wife (who was born in Surinam). His view on the Islands and Surinam is written down in an unconventional matter. Easy to read but displaying a patronizing attitude. His descriptive paragraphs throughout the whole travel book and his concluding chapter about his doubts are inspiring.

IN EAR

swamp test surface

Uneasiness, Representation, Mieke van de Voort in Monumentalism

In the text History and Trauma about the exhibition Monumentalism in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 2010, Jennifer Allen explains the impossibility of Representing Trauma.

Like Allen, I am (again) wondering what it is that art can do, more than a display of uneasiness towards troubled histories through representation and repetition of silenced voices of the marginalized. For example in the much quoted work of Renzo Martens (episode 3, enjoy poverty) where again the repetition of history by an artist in a new context is re-enacted. 

Allen writes: "Many of the artworks in the exhibition seem to sit uneasily between historical representation and traumatic repression (..) In this context, what citizen-residents share are not the particular events of one history - whether the national official history or the not so official history - but history as a general phenomenon: from wars, politics, and treaties to cultural history, memoire, and micro history, to feminism, post colonialism and queerness. If the particular events no longer coincide, then it is the emotions themselves - the trauma of being a historical subject - that increasingly binds us together. (..) Trauma cannot be turned into history, the repressed into representation, without a common subject, a common experience, a common narrative that can be symbolized and witnessed. (..) What we share is the lingering fear and panic, which can so easily break out." page 148,162,164 Monumentalism catalogue SMBA 2010

This text is written 5 years ago, but the question remains I feel. In my own work I am troubled with the same issues. I tend to zoom in on private histories that are not mine. What is there to be found in this proximity? 

Mieke van de Voort was an artist participating in the show, she gained my interest because I recognize a similar questions in her last works before she died. There is not much documented of her work. She went to Surinam to photograph former Marrons, in particular one of her friends Vinije, but struggled with the photographic process and the ontological impossibility of capturing the essence of a loved one. Therefore she decided to make a three-dimensional figure, a wax cast of Vinije taken with plaster molds. 

What if one would place her work next to Nola Hatterman's figurative portraits? First thing I would point out is that Vinije is looking at Mieke. Hatterman's models never really do.

Schets voor Vinije, 2010

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam Archive - Purchases 1939, nr 13: Nola Hatterman, Arbeider, neger  250,- gulden