GEHEIME TUIN
The earthly paradise, the garden of Eden, a safe place. Violence against women is still a major problem worldwide. Domestic violence, sexual violence, cyber violence. This has to stop.
Even if you have a lot of worries, you are not feeling well or you are simply too busy and just keep running, it is necessary to withdraw for a while and find peace.
Weib! * Secret garden shows the healing power of nature, safe places where you can hide. It doesn't necessarily have to be a literal garden, or the forest. The secret garden can also be in your heart, in your dreams or thoughts.
Eve was banished from paradise with Adam, now she returns to connect, heal, become stronger and grow. Self-confidently she shows who she is, and she blossoms like never before.
Weib! artists take you to their secret garden......
This exhibition was created and curated by Monica Croese.
July 2022 NDDA Ubbergen.
Photos
Astrid van Rijn
The secret garden is an old acquaintance, the foundation, where everything is right and as intended, call it love, it is a matter of returning and recognition.
Marguerite de Geus
My secret garden is a place where man is not placed above, but in the midst of nature, and where the intuitive takes precedence, even before the rational and the cerebral.
“This is work that is increasingly coming into its own. Marie-Louise Elshout has been working for years on a consistent oeuvre of drawings and paintings in which delicate, fragile figures appear. It has often been described as referring to the occult, the night side of existence. I believe that. But I also believe that there is a positive side to that mystical aura. When everyday reality offers no way out, Elshout opens the door for us to a new, unknown space. To change into a new or different person. Marie-Louise looks inward, to the emotional world and the mysterious places of the imaginative imagination.
Mariette Dölle, director Nieuwe Kerk Amsterdam, 2022
In het werk van Loes Groothuis vormt tekenen altijd de basis. Haar ruimtelijke installaties maakt ze van haar tekeningen waar ze karton en papier maché aan toevoegt. Groothuis haalt haar inspiratie uit scheppingsverhalen en de mythologie. Haar beeldtaal komt voort uit een fascinatie voor mideleeuwse, Italiaanse fresco's en uit de vroege renaissance. Ook het levenswiel en mandala's uit het Boedhisme zijn belangrijke inspiratie-bronnen en keren in vorm en kleur terug in het werk van Groothuis. Haar installaties beschouwt ze dan ook als een verbeelding van deze werelden, met tempels, het paradijs of juist een onderwereld en de hel.
Monica Croese
Daily worries and the madness of the day sometimes keep us so busy that we lose the connection with nature and mother earth. Then I sit in the garden for a while and listen with my eyes closed to the sounds I hear and what I feel. Chirping birds, buzzing insects, the tapping of the rain, the warmth of the sun, the rustling of the wind, the chill when it freezes. That brings me back to myself and gives me peace. When I am tormented by worries and cannot sleep, I fantasize about a safe place, my secret garden where no one can enter. In this garden I cherish my dreams and sow hope. In many of my drawings and paintings you see seeds and light that make hope and dreams germinate.
Marjoke van de Plassche
Sitting in silence in a place where I feel safe and secure feels like coming home to me. It doesn't matter where that place is exactly, the most important thing is that my inner world can coincide with the outside world. In many places where I go, the softness, the envelopment, the silence and the safe feeling that nature offers me is missing. I try to fill this gap through my spatial installations. The installations feel like coming home to many visitors and evoke relaxation. I consciously combine soft materials, sound, calm colours.
The objects of
Brigitte Picavetare made of books. They are the result of a mystical experience, a sensation that is difficult to put into words. In order to do some justice to the importance of this 'silent experience', and to meet the viewer somewhat, here is an attempt. Although the secret garden enclosed in her work can no longer be read or known via the intellect, and although the garden of pleasure cannot be physically entered either. But what happens when a book is hermetically sealed and made illegible?
The 'garden' has been a recurring theme in my work since 1996. I actually see myself as a garden with ever-changing borders where pain, sorrow, joy, wisdom, recovery and growth have a place. The difference with rooms inside a house is that here the seasons exist, which means there are constant changes.
I recently learned about the origin of the word 'paradise' which comes from 'pairi daeza', Persian for enclosed garden. And that the designs for it are often found on Persian carpets.
