Wendelien Bakker
Fieldwork / Landscape
Think of Sisyphus, repeatedly rolling a boulder to the peak of a hill only to watch it roll down again. Within the myth lives effort, hope, disappointment, failure and repeated trying. Much the same, a relentless determination for some self-defined legitimacy informs my practice.
Fieldwork/Landscape involves a curiosity about the environment, and an endurance and determination to change it—my practice, in a way, is the fighting with and against nature. My surrounding environment demands an awareness of my body in relation to space. By using different landscapes as a lens, I process my relationship to place and land. How does a place respond to us?
This curiosity intuitively evolves into project-based works that are built up on elusive hopes with equal potential for resolution or disappointment. Like most Sisyphean tasks, it is a naïve conquest for the potentially impossible.
Each of my pursuits circle around an instinctive desire. Whether it is wanting to move the horizon or to capture the movement of water on paper; wanting to own land or grow the blackest tulip. By simply starting these initial wants, each proposition is navigated through a DIY approach and a strong reliance on the individual and the environment. This self-reliance adds mentally and physically performative elements to otherwise largely research-based projects.
