I am a natural born dreamer, a
contrary escapist ánd a natural born Amsterdammer who is obsessed by the city
and her inhabitants. I get my inspiration from humans in city streets, from dreams and from peoples’ relentless
search for paradise. So i came to this ~
Short sketch of the exhibition Paradise Lost.
Are you escaping from the city, or to it?
What paradise are people searching for? What does it
look like? Is it the most beautiful and calming place, with lush nature and
tranquility?
In big cities the artificial nature and the many
different cultural identities reveal a new urban paradise. Is it a paradise? Maybe seventeenthe century writer John Milton, who at
the end of his life, half dead and blind wrote Lost Paradise, was right?
Looking at today’s dreadful problems regarding
refugees and hosting them safely… How decadent is this tendency for escapism
then?
The city of Amsterdam: paradise for refugees? But a
place to flee from for all citizens with their burned out brains, mindfullness
apps and social media addictions.
Overexposure of… everything…. damages humans and
society. As an artist, a writer and a curator of this exhibition i want to show
work that confronts us with these tensions, that functions as a beautiful
hiding place, a story in which one can live, all the while asking oneselves if
one really feels at home there. Images can be utopian, escapist dreamscapes as
well, fleeing harsh reality.
