images used for the installation
Installation view
exhibition
Be[com]ing Dutch
The Exhibition
Curators: Annie Fletcher,Charles Esche
The exhibition Be(com)ing Dutch is part of a large scale project that has been in progress for two years. During that time, the museum has focused on what have become sensitive issues for the Netherlands, such as identity, nationality, citizenship and social cohesion. In those two years artists, intellectuals, politicians and the people of Eindhoven were invited to find possible answers to awkward questions. What does ‘Being Dutch' or ‘Becoming Dutch’ mean in the 21st Century? Who are ‘the Dutch’ anyway and how do we want to be seen by ourselves and others? The outcome of this whole process is being shown in an exhibition of artists’ works in the museum and throughout the city of Eindhoven.
Be(com)ing Dutch is unusual in the Netherlands because it takes on an outright political and social subject and translates it into artistic terms. Since 2006, when the Van Abbemuseum was awarded a prize that made it possible to turn our existing ideas into reality, the discussion in the Netherlands about who we are, where we come from, where we are heading and about our norms and values in a globalising world has become even more topical and urgent. The long term planning allowed the museum to talk with people at length and to organise major public discussions such as the Eindhoven Caucus. Now it is the turn of artists, many of whom have participated in all the stages of Be(com)ing Dutch, to show you what they have found. Twenty one of the thirty seven artists have conceived new works for the exhibition, guided by three broad directional themes: ‘Imaginary Past’, ‘ Imaginary Present’ and ‘Imaginary Future’. Look for more information about the complete Be(com)ing Dutch project at www.becomingdutch.com.
Charles Esche & Annie Fletcher
Be(com)ing Dutch activities & Art beyond the walls
The Question Paintings March
Saturday 24 May from 15:15 h.
Arabic course
25 May, 7, 21 and 28 June, 6 and 13 September
Johan van der Keuken - Amsterdam Global Village, 1996
28 and 29 June, 26 and 27 July, 30 and 31 August and 13 and 14 September at 12:00 hours
Phil Collins – Free fotolab (Eindhoven)
24 May until 28 July 2008
Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson - Avant-garde Citizens
24 May until 14 September 2008
Erwin van Doorn - A Stop for the Crowd/ Halte voor de Menigte
24 May until 14 September 2008
The State of Translocality - Series in the State of Translocality
5 until 11 July 2008
Petra Bauer & Annette Krauss - Read the masks. Tradition is not given
30 August 2008
Ronen Eidelman - Means of survival
From 12 September 2008
Bik Van der Pol - Close Encounters
14 September 2008
With the artists:
Petra Bauer
Abdellatif Benfaidoul
Michael Blum
Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson
Phil Collins
Carla Cruz
Gerrit Dekker
Erwin van Doorn
Ronen Eidelman
Ed van der Elsken
Hadassah Emmerich
Alexandra Ferreira
Daan van Golden
Rana Hamadeh
Nicoline van Harskamp
Alicia Herrero
Hans van Houwelingen
Johan van der Keuken Annette Krauss
Agung Kurniawan
Surasi Kusolwong
Toos Nijssen
Ahmet Öğüt
Wendelien van Oldenborgh
Bik Van der Pol
Ilya Rabinovich
Mario Rizzi
Mounira Al Solh
Fiona Tan
Alite Thijsen
Lidwien van de Ven
Tintin Wulia
Bettina Wind
Stephen Willats
The Mondriaan Foundation awarded its 2006 Development Prize for Cultural Diversity to the Van Abbemuseum for the Be(com)ing Dutch project. Within this project’s framework, the museum has organized a diversity of gatherings over the last two years resulting in The Be(com)ing Dutch exhibition.
A comprehensive catalogue will be published in spring 2009.
Background :
Since my immigration to Amsterdam in 1998, I was always curious about the locals’ daily lives, which have been the subject for many conversations with international artists participants in the program of the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten
I developed a fascination for the 'open curtains' phenomena, where one can easily view the private interior of people’s homes from the street level. In social conversations this served to present the locals as an example for how open minded the Dutch people living in Amsterdam are. A 'we have nothing to hide' attitude that proved to be restricted and limited in what I could actually observe when I tried to focus on it. At times, I could get a glance on small 'idyllic' scenes, mostly ones that I would associate with a music box scene: sweet, perfectly orchestrated and mechanical.
It was hard for me to accept that my looking into apartments and viewing private rooms was part of the norm. This relationship of the private space and the public sphere is one of the phenomena that distinguish Amsterdam from other European cities.
More recently I started 'peeping' with a telephoto-lens into some of these rooms and taking photographs of the scenes I find. On these occasions I do not stand in the street but rather ask acquaintances for a permission to use their windows in order to look into their neighbor's apartments. The results are ‘Rear Window Photographs’, the title of which references Alfred Hitchcock’s film. I am currently taking photographs for this project, and in April 2008 I will print them in Grafisch Atelier Daglicht (http://www.grafisch-atelier- daglicht.nl ) as silkscreen images on news print paper.
The Installation
For the exhibition 'Becoming Dutch', I made the following installation:
Upon entering the space, visitors received a small light with which they initiated a search and discovery of the installation. A large number of Rear Window Photographs in various sizes were spread around the space, waiting to be spotted, realized, and contemplated by the drifting visitor.
Coming across more and more images unwrapped the initial uneasiness caused by the dark, turning the search into a playful experience in which visitors became active participants. The photographs were printed using a silk-screen technique, a particular aesthetic that created a layer of unresolved tension throughout the viewing experience. An image that seemed sharp enough from a distance
became obscure on a closer look. In the accumulative process of encountering
new photographs and realizing their collective nature as 'rear window peeping
photographs', the participant was faced with an essential theme of the installation: the reflexive notion of voyeurism and its relation to the other.
Our capacity to look and to see ourselves through the eyes of others is at the core of our psychological formation. Social sanctions against "staring" or being "nosy" reflect deeply rooted cultural taboos which forbid looking too closely. An exception is made when, within the safety of a darkened auditorium and in the company of others, our urge to peep may be indulged and we may temporarily escape and forget who we are as we become involved in searching images in the space.
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