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Hello this is what I did this semester I hope you enjoy coming on this journey with me!!!

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ALL YOU CAN ARTTTT

WRITTING MATTERS

full zine :
https://issuu.com/pepperonitoast/docs/forever_and_always2

Photo by: Naomi Modde

I was excited to be able to meet somebody that I would not normally meet and even more, discuss art with!
Sadly I was not in a pair but the end I was happy I could come up with a concept by myself and execute it all alone!

I had the pleasure of going to Laurens in Delfshaven. This old people’s home is a warm and welcoming place with very different types of residents. On the day of my visit, I was welcomed by Yvonne, a very sweet lady who introduced me to Henk Djojowikromo. Henk is a 52-year-old Surinamese man. Sadly, 3 years ago he suffered an accident which left him paralyzed. Meeting Henk was truly an honour, the day I visited he was accompanied by his mother and his granddaughter so it was very special.

There was a slight language barrier but this did not stop us from talking about the painting in his room. He tried, as well as he could, to tell me his perception of the painting. We spoke about star signs, houses, the sea, friendship and his adorable granddaughter. He was fixated on the shape of the shell and how it reminded him of a pig. We share a star sign and a favourite colour! Who would have thought? I came home that day feeling nostalgic, honoured, proud and grateful. I was also extremely excited to start on what I knew would be a painting.

I decided to keep it simple. 3 elements that made me think of him/that we talked about mainly. The pig, the crab (for our star sign) and this chain. This beautiful majestic chain was hanging around his neck when I met him and I knew I had to incorporate it in the painting. I mixed my childish style of painting with something more realistic to push myself out of my comfort zone. With the trusted advice and help of Robin, I finally managed to make the biggest oil painting I have made yet!

Henk will receive the painting next week which I am very excited and a bit nervous about! Overall I am extremely happy with how it turned out and content with the project in general! Also how cool my work was inside the Kunsthal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For our final practice project, we are working in a group of 5. We all are very interested and active in this project, all give ideas and respond to each other which is a super nice and rare situation.We are making a project about the gender of architecture, and are focusing mainly on how masculine big parts of the city are such as buildings. We are doing a lot of research on gender, feminism (in architecture), and exploring how buildings feel feminine, masculine or genderless.
With this project, we bring the private (sexual) out, and hereby reclaim power from the male gaze in the masculine city, and give power to the feminine and queer gaze. We are visualising this by making silicone hands in sexual gestures (fist, two fingers out, hand holding position) to disrupt the hyper maleness of the area through this slight absurdism. These hands we are going to put into the city on, what see as masculine buildings and give our final presentation there + photograph them.

For the theory part of this practice, we had to make a lexicon. We all picked 20 words that fit this project and our art practice and had to define these.

I am so glad I was able to follow this class. It was a real eye-opener for me and a great skill to learn how to write about myself as an artist. I also learned a lot about the other people in the class which was very special.
We all stayed very respectful of each other as we all shared many personal things throughout the weeks.

Writing is something I enjoy doing but never something I thought could link to my art practice so much, not only did I learn how to write about my work, most importantly I learnt how to make a work out of writing. We were coached on our texts and each week were asked to bring a new style of text. We made an artist statement, linear and more fluid, a creative text inspired by a book or passage and finally an essay on a chosen subject.

I found it tricky to write my artist statement as I don’t feel as though I know exactly who I am as an artist yet. At first, I kept it witty and structured, I was scared to open up about my hardships which make me the artist I am. With time and the help of Esma, I feel like I’ve finally found words to describe me….

For my creative text, I took inspiration from a book I hold very close to my heart ‘So sad today’ by Melissa Broder. This selection of personal essays touches upon her experiences with sexuality and mental health. I wrote a stream of consciousness about my own experiences with the topics and tried to take on a similar writing style!

Finally, for my essay, I focused on my past. The past and nostalgia are the main themes in my work therefore I thought of sharing an experience that was very personal to me but disguised in a bit of humour as per usual! I wrote about my experience as a liar and how this impacted my life. It was an incredibly emotional piece for me to write, I spent many days crying about each sentence. I am proud of the outcome of my essay.

Overall I made a zine which was nostalgic but with a touch of humour I called it ‘Always and forever me’. This was a continuation of my artist catalogue from last March called ‘Always and forever'. I kept the design very playful to lighten the mood…….. If you read it I hope you enjoy getting to know me better as I sure enjoyed getting to know myself in the process.

(first artist statement)

Map the bold was an assignment that allowed us to map our version of Rotterdam. I chose to explore the juxtaposition Rotterdam has to offer and touched upon themes such as drugs, sex and childlike innocence.

I chose the autonomous practice because it was the only practice I had not tried. Public and private seemed to encompass topics such as society and mapping which I’m interested in.
In the practice, we started by doing weekly micro-assignments.

The second micro-assignment was the ‘voice of the city’. This assignment focused on going out in the city and listening to the sounds and conversations. From this, I specifically picked up on what nicknames people call each other (English and Dutch). I made a funny interactive leaflet called ‘Who would say what?’. The concept behind this leaflet was to play with the stereotypes of what type of person would say what.

Finally we had to make an intervention. Robin and I collaborated in making a video. We walked around Rotterdam in hopes of brightening people’s days by complimenting them! It was a success!