I
was born in Deurne (Holland) in 1973. At the moment I work one
day in a week in a “children world garden” in a poor neighboorhood in
Rotterdam. This garden is initiated by my twinbrother who started this garden
by himself 7 years ago. Nowadays this “worldgarden” plays an important role for
children, artist, cultural workers in that area. People from all nationalities
work together in this “worldgarden”. I still don’t see these activities as
separate from my artist activities... I still work with and for the environment
and believe in a more social and human environment where people can learn from
each other, their environment or the actual situation they are in. The activities of my brother fits in the line of my family activities. My
parents were both social workers and we grew up in a small village
where I was the youngest out of four children. My mother divorced
when I was very young. My mother or father were never at home when
me and my brother came home after school. We found our energy, attention and
passion in playing outside in the rough and chaotic garden where we spent our
time making cabin trees and mobiles. Nowadays me and my brother still gets our
ideas from this adventurous but also our very chaotic childhood.
I lived in the south of Holland (Den Bosch,1996-1998) for the art academy and did my masters in Amsterdam; in the Ateliers where I finished in 2001. During this period I also did a lot of jobs to pay my school and some jobs still teach me how to deal with art. During my art school I spent every weekend, as a mobile commercial “door” and “kitchen” seller in front of a mobile ugly green caravan which brought me to different parts and outskirts of the city, where I had to write addresses of people who might be interested in getting a “new, renovated kitchen” or “door”. Some people from art school who saw me in that too fancy business costume thought that I’m doing a performance... and actually they were right; I was doing a performance every weekend. I learned skills which I still use today in my art profession. My work always reacts on the surrounding and I still see my role as someone who research the “condition” of time and place. That condition ask me or the visitor to reflect his or her surrounding and I will always be aware of that surrounding.
In 2007 I started to make mobile studio’s around the world. A mobile studio relates with my way of working and reflects in all circumstances my direct reaction to the surrounding where I’m at that moment. While going to a new city I create a working space with found materials. In Los Angeles (2007) I made an easy to plug and unplug cardboard desk which visualise and criticize the American fastfood-mind. In Seoul, (Korea 2008) I spent 3 months making drawings on cardboard boxes about “mobile social transport”. Finally I printed these drawings on supersize self-made big boxes and brought them to restaurants, cafés and galleries where I had a one-day exhibition. And in Tokyo (2009) I just found a way how to make a bar out of an umbrella and invited people to enter this bar in the most crowded and commercial areas... This way of working forces me to see my atelier or studio in a way I can react, communicate and reflect easily to different circumstances in a global but at the same time local way. My art works still travel around the world confronting different places and situations. I also see the “working-process” and the deal with local “craftsmen” who finish my art-piece, as an important part of the total artwork.
12.02.2010
