Recently graduated artists focus on their own family tree in Mother(Land)

Ninth edition of Currents is a search for who you are and where you come from

31 January 2022

Ten recently graduated artists focus on their own family tree. In Mother(Land) they show that your identity is formed by your personal history and the places where that history has taken place.

Whenever people who were raised in a village or a tight-knit community meet someone new, they’re often asked:

“Who are your parents?” or “What family do you belong to?”

It is a question about who they are, assuming one’s ancestors reveal something about their identity. It’s an attempt to place them and to unravel their story.

When we look at our parents and their parents, and the parents who raised them; when we look at the ground they walked on, the places they called home, the work they did and the battles they fought; we encounter stories that will always live on in our minds and hearts. This type of inheritance shows us we cannot be defined by one story, or one identity. Our histories aren’t static or complete. They crawl underneath our skin, inform our taste and gaze; these stories are being lived right now.

Curators Lieneke Hulshof and Fenne Saedt visited fourteen graduate shows in Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium, in order to assemble the participating artists for Currents #9. They were struck by how many of these artists give expression to their heritage and family tree. This red thread does not always appear literally, it can be shown through the family homes they grew up in, the religion that shaped their youth, a country of birth that no longer exists or old friends who have become close like family. When our freedom of movement was limited and the door to the outside world was closed, these young artists turned their gaze inwards, and uncovered a whole universe from that small perspective.

Artworks made from clay, stitched with thread and brought to life by layers of paint are the perfect match for these stories, because the physical material enables these artists to give shape to their abstract, invisible and intimate histories.

Participating artists: Anne Arndt (GDR), Sigurrós Björnsdóttir (IS), Emilia Chinwe Brys (BE), Lou Cocody-Valentino (MQ/FR), Doris Kolpa (NL), Telma Lemarchand (FR), Denys Shantar (UA/CH), Seppe Vancraywinkel (BE), Joppe Venema (NL) and Theresa Weber (DE)

Curators: Fenne Saedt (NL) and Lieneke Hulshof (NL)

Mother(Land) runs from 30.01 to 06.03 in Z33.

In collaboration with Marres and FLACC.

With the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Belgium.

Currents

Currents is an annual group exhibition of work by recently graduated artists from art schools in Belgium, North Rhine-Westphalia and the Southern Netherlands organised by Marres in Maastricht and Z33 in Hasselt.