Winner of the Klaas Dijkstra Academy award / Co-winner Long Live Art Price
For years, I regularly drove past the house in Etersheim with my mother. The place where she was happiest.
A beautiful rectory on the dike in North Holland. In her stories, it changed from a home to a fairytale world where the bathroom was not a bathroom and the dark black study turned out to be a connection to the neighborhood. Spring and summer 2019 I started to follow my mother’s story. An investigation into happiness with a painful view inward. A time travel with an unexpected surprise. A stage for my mother, the wife, the girl.
I made a representation in my VW van from the images that her stories and research yielded. Room by room. Taking her stories with me.
The one place where she was happy
The research appeared to have common ground with that of colleague Christina Everts, a combination and collaboration seemed to make an enrichment possible. An Artist in Residency. In a VW bus, while touring the Netherlands, we spoke with visitors about what makes a home, the home of parents and aunts. And we read Daisies from the 1950s.
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"The bathroom was never used as a bathroom. Somehow the sink disappeared, possibly in the war. My mother had put women's magazine in a corner. In my spare moments I went there to read those magazines. There was such a wonderful atmosphere there." Eva
Video - onderdeel installatie in mijn bus - ik stap in het leven van mijn moeder -