Project 72 – Remembrance and homage 

An installation as a homage to my father, who was always supportive of and believing in my abilities, and in remembrance of the garage I grew up in. On show at Kunstenlab Deventer from Sunday, April 10 until Sunday, May 15, 2022.

Project 72 installation overview

Project 72 opening with poetry reading, and music by Folkert Buis, April 10, 2022. Video by Aalt van de Glind / Kunstenlab.

Project 72 installation overview

Drawing of the inside of the now demolished Alfa garage Bella Macchina, on show in the Kunstenlabsteeg.

Some pictures of the process.

The installation is a spatial arrangement of 72 blocks of chopped wood and 72 drawings of them on the wall, for the number of years my father, who passed away in 2019, lived. For the better part of my youth I grew up in the car garage my parents owned. A number of woodblocks, the  ‘garage years’, is to be covered with waste oil. De 72 blocks of wood are arranged to form a score (in the broadest sense) of 72 notes for a musical piece/soundscape, written by friend and composer Folkert Buis. 

The woodblocks refer to my fascination for the recurring, similar, yet never the same shapes, structures and patterns of woods, trees en landscapes - a theme in my art, whereas the oil is reminiscent of a the disappearing world of the old-fashioned garage. The atmosphere I want to create allows for feelings of nostalgia, without adulating a literal past. Gradually, it also became a project about remembering itself, the human inclination to always shape stories out of bits and fragments – which also is a recurring theme in especially my writing.

But in the story of my father's 'escape from the oil', I see a parallel with how we, the world, are slowly escaping (or should be trying to escape) from the use of fossil fuels. The world we grew up in is disappearing, but is it even possible to escape our origin, our history?