Sunday, March 24, 2019

The Mother, The Woman

Last night I made a performance at the opening of the Book Week, in the library in Deventer. The theme, The Mother, The Woman, had been known for a long time and I decided to make an image that I started with at the culture night on Texel. This statue, which is me, is dressed in a large jute skirt and jute tube, I endlessly peel potatoes that are then thrown into a large pan.

Performance at the opening of the Dutch week of books in 2019, in the new library in Deventer. This years' theme: The Mother, The Woman, invited by the Kunstenlab Deventer.

Performance at the opening of the Dutch week of books in 2019, in the new library in Deventer. This years' theme: The Mother, The Woman, invited by the Kunstenlab Deventer.

My performance started at 2:00 PM and at 4:00 PM I would have a briefly announced moment with an audience that would only pay attention to my work. Until then, I concentrated on peeling potatoes and ignored the dozens of questions from people who passed by, why do you peel so many potatoes, madam? Until a child asked me, reluctantly, ma'am, what are you doing? I replied that I was peeling potatoes for my fifteen children.

When my moment came, I addressed my audience, I would tell them why I made this image. I talked about my mother, the youngest of a family of 13 children. Her mother married when she was 28, to a man she had met three times, from a village five kilometers away. Her first three children died of pneumonia, in a ditch and at birth. She subsequently had ten more children, of which a young man died of kidney failure at the age of twenty. I told my audience that life was different, and that hard work was the moral, also my mother's motto, then you are a good person.

She worked very hard all her life, had control over everything and her days looked well filled and fully planned. Now she has lost almost everything in two months, she is developing dementia incredibly quickly, my father is not coping well. He gets confused when she proposes to eat sandwiches at Kruidvat at 1 o'clock in the morning, he thinks she is going crazy and thinks she shouldn't be so strange, that's not possible, Lenie. I told my audience that that's why I peeled so many potatoes, as an ode to my mother.

For some time I had lost the connection with my heart, now it spoke like this, in improvisation, with the need to tell something real. The harrowing things we go through also make real happiness palpable.

I close off this work with a soft heart and and strong memories of yesterday.