Artist’s Notes

TREUREN (a memory word from my Dutch heritage) is an installation of 80 gelatin silver print and two Piezography images. TREUREN references the tear, that place in the soul where sorrow alights and takes up residence.

Events and conditions in the world have made me increasingly aware of the fragile commodification of humanity and environmental resources. This work is my ownership of that void, my response to the deep, quiet grief I feel as I witness the machines of power become increasingly hegemonic and global nationals eat away at the environment and human rights for transitory, self-serving gain.

How does one live with this knowledge?  How is it that we live our lives as if this were OK? How does one come to peace with our collective culpability in creating these conditions? What should my/our response be? How can I, as participant feel empowered to affect change for the long-term survival, not only of myself, but of ‘the other’? How can one not weep?

Surrounding four droplets of water floating in space, against a deep black are multiple hands, also floating, away from “steun” (support), away from solidarity and that which is known. Gestures of grieving, of hoping, confronting, holding, pushing, enfolding. Postures of power, and no. Hands that tell the history of many, hands that have become almost robotic, hands that have worked too long, too hard and ones that have truly not worked at all. Knuckles so intertwined as to destroy the myth of opposition without being in the dance with “the other”.

This exhibition is a site-specific, black and white photography installation. The nature of the exhibition lends itself well to a smaller, more intimate gallery space, although reconfiguration with fewer or more hands is possible while remaining true to concept.

Approximately 80 silver gelatin prints of hands, ranging in size from 4 x 6” (10 x15cm) to 16 x 20” (40x50cm) are float-mounted on brackets 3 - 7” (7.5-17.5cm) from the wall, in varying degrees of relationship to one another and the whole. Each print is backed with foam-core and attached with Velcro to the metal brackets. The edges of the prints are physically burnt, creating a very fragile, raw frame.  Directional lighting produces the visual effect of a quilt as image interweaves with shadow.

With 38-40 images on each of two walls, the hands surround two 24 x 20” (60x50cm) Piezography prints of water droplets. These two images, printed on watercolour paper, are framed and not burned.  The frames are the same colour as the wall on which they are hung.