april 28, 2008...11:34 pm
Bareland
Bareland
used bricks, chicken breastbones, moss; 2005
Places I’ve Been, Consortium, Amsterdam, 2005
Bareland was created for ‘Places I’ve been’, an exhibition in Amsterdam curated by Hans Op de Beeck. By rethinking and looking back at my former work, I came to the concept of ‘My Backyard’. ’My backyard’ is based on what Aldous Huxley called ‘the rainforest of our brain’. It’s a place yet to be discovered, filled with strange creatures and scenes from long gone and current times. A religious enchanted forest, vivid in our daily mind.
For ‘Places I’ve been’ I wanted to create a magical scene, a scene that refers not only to my personal history and to the actual times, but also to the past and to unknown, mysterious places, which we all share.
The starting point for ‘Bareland’ was a well, more precisely a wishing well. The study about wishing wells lead me not only to fairytales and amusement parks, but also to forgotten villages and battlefields. The content guided the form and vice versa.
The bones used in ‘Bareland’ are breastbones of chickens. The breastbones of a chicken have grown together to one breastbone. That’s why a chicken can’t fly. Where I come from we have a little game when we eat chicken. If you find the breastbone during dinner, you choose a partner. Then you pull untill the breastbone breaks into two pieces. The one who has got the longest piece is the winner. He can make a wish. In that way the breastbone of a chicken can be considered as a wishing bone.
Bareland is a tower/well made out of bricks found on construction areas. Every stone has a story, as do the bones. The moss surrounding the well refers to idyllic images you find in fairytales and utopian places.
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