Erasmus Huis put on display Domestic Circle
JP/19/DUTCH
Erasmus Huis puts Domestic Circle on display
M. Taufiqurrahman The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
To meet the growing demand for the works of Dutch photographers, the Cultural Center in Jakarta, the Erasmus Huis, is currently exhibiting the works of seven lens men who have been promoting a bold new style in their visual art.
Titled `Domestic Circle', the exhibition displays the works of Wijnanda Deroo, Sara Blokland, Astrid Hermes, Phoebe Maas, Marnix Goossens and Elspeth Diederix; representatives of an emerging generation of Dutch photographers who have the similar penchant for focusing on personal environments.
The most senior members of the new emerging photographers -- Deroo, for instance -- shows the magic of abandoned buildings and homes, by using light and dark planes as well as scarce sunlight to determine the atmosphere of the spaces.
In one of his works, Blue Masterbedroom, Deroo captures a vacant bedroom, which is either waiting to be occupied by its tenant, or has just been abandoned by its occupant.
Blinding white sun-rays come through a blinded window, with the glimmer of its light falling on the rug-covered floor only adding to the sense of abandon.
In Diningroom, Deroo shoots his object against the light, which is somehow subdued by the lamp that has apparently been turned on for days above a dining table.
The lamp and some tape glued to the floor are reminders that everyone has left the building and that nothing but emptiness remains.
Another photographer who deserves attention for her outstanding work is Blokland.
Although it is not immediately evident that Blokland is informed of a journalistic ethos, her works are experiments with the way photography and video are witnesses to events.
In Home, the 36-year-old photographer uses simple objects commonly found in almost all households; a framed photograph, a statuette, a pin and clock to show certain people's past histories.
It is as if the audience can learn a family history in a blink of an eye.
Hermes, on the other hand, dwells on the theme of human alienation. She carries the idea that our experiences are formed and bounded by our bodies, but in turn our bodies are controlled by our direct environment.
In one of her untitled photo, Hermes photographs the back of a woman sitting on a couch. The color of the woman's dress and the object on which she is sitting on are the same.
However, the most heartbreaking attribute about the photo is the fact that both the dress and the couch have strikingly similar features; the dress' zipper and the couch's stitches.
The woman has in fact become one with the object that is supposed to aid her. Like Albert Camus' observation of Sisyphus, the god who is condemned to ceaselessly push a rock to the top of a mountain only to watch it roll down again. "It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself!.
"One must imagine Sisyphus happy," Camus exclaims.
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"Domestic Circle: New Dutch Photography" exhibition runs until June 11 at the Erasmus Huis, Jl. H.R. Rasuna Said, Kav. S-3, Kuningan, South Jakarta. Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m., Friday, 9 a.m. - 2 p.m., Saturday, 9 a.m. - midday.