Installation in commission of Kunst in Duin 2012.
This area was once populated by what we now call: 'hunters-collectors'. Or in other words: tramps, nomades, people with no permanent home or address. People for whom the words 'border', 'my land' and 'your land' had a completely different meaning.
But they too drew their bounderies somewhere. They made their place to rest into a shelter. Against the world. A safe haven. But how much shelter gives this fragile contruction in an open area?
In the installation 'PLACES TO REST' I use this theme: I start from the circomstances in the area and create new places to rest. Trees are the starting point, as a support for the forms that I set up.
Therefor I use strips of old textile, material that already has its own history. Material that carries a lot of associations. With these strips I build places to rest; I thighten strips of textile between the trees and this way I create a more or less closed space. A place to rest. Like a fold-away shelter. A safe haven.
The material is vulnerable, ephemeral. The place to rest is temporary. For someone who takes a rest and then moves on again.
The place to rest forms an accessible inner space, which gives shelter. But the strips can move in all kind of directions, and that way create confusion; difficult to get in. Or to get out.
The material, with its colour and its palpability, creates a contrast with this confusion. Like a mirror of our own world: what protects us can strangle us. And the other way around: what restricts us can also protect us.