I used to feel my canvas lacked depth, volume or spirit.
It was present, but not present, if you know what mean?
It lacked meaning and didn’t add to any kind of speech
so it looked just like it had ever sounded: Silent.
I tried many kind of techniques.
Overcompensating
Invisibility
Changing color, shape or form
Looking up to all the queens in our history
But I never found the resemblance I seeked.
Continue reading “I’ve had enough”
We used to press cheeks yearly.
Your wrinkled portrait would hug my skin and make it feel home again.
Although I’d only visit once every year the folds in your face were my safe space.
They’d catch my tears when our lips would finally meet again.
They’d stretch my smile when it had become a pout.
They’d make words travel far away that had me shout and soften every blow. Continue reading “Permanent neighbors”
We moved houses twice.
From appartement in the center to a home facing an asylum.
And eventually a house in a tiny, tiny village.
All our doors colored the same imaginary colors.
By arrival we would paint them with our eyelashes.
Blinking the colors blue, white and red onto our front door canvasses. Representing our nations presented on a platter. Continue reading “Ten front doors”
TAC Eindhoven asked me to join this collaboration in which they ask an artist to write a piece about the upcoming exhibition in their art centre. Stella Verdult explores new and wider possibilities of what color is and how we name color. I wrote about a journey in which we always see new colours during traveling to foreign countries. The video was shot and edited by Almichael Fraay.
This is a performance of two poems which I’ve rewritten into one, especially for the live broadcast performance at United Cowboys in Eindhoven. The Artistic Directors Pauline Roelants and Maarten van der Put select and present the evenings in one flow of impressions and experiences. Video by Maarten van der Put. Introduction by Pauline Roelants.
Watershed gave me this opportunity.
It was the end of what felt as a dragging decade and
it took us several clockworks to finally scratch each other’s scabs,
see each other sweat simultaneously while we both screamed:
F I N A L L Y, our flights had arrived.
I sighed.
From the moment your tiny body grew from a speck on the horizon into a giant my heart expanded.
Knowing we were breathing the same breeze took all the weary out of my toes and refilled me with long lost excitement.
I wrapped it in trash can cardboard.
The grease covered the ugly that already had been there
so actually, the disgust lied naked.
Four friendships ago you emptied yourself.
I nurtured your homeless dinners,
put bandaid to your wholesome darkness,
I pushed light back into the corners
and completed the levels you failed.
For the online event TAC 2 GO by TAC Eindhoven we made this video in which I perform a piece about my experiences with the first lockdown during this pandemic.
There once was a seed.
O, dare she be
a flower?
She could only dream of being as elegant as thee.
Continue reading “Every plant must grow”
She would stitch hearts on her denim jacket
for people to see her sleeves.
She would show the world the back of her tongue.
Because her name was Courage.
Continue reading “Her name was Courage”