Larissa Esvelt
Portugal’s colonial past is inextricably intertwined with the azulejo culture the country is so proud of. Larissa Esvelt, whose Portuguese father was born in Angola, crossed the cities of Lisbon and Porto to document the countless historical tileworks in public spaces, palaces and churches. The thousands of photographs she took served as inspiration for a series of figures she materialised during her EKWC residency. Esvelt wanted to transfigure the two-dimensional paintings of the azulejos to three-dimensional sculptures arranged in a theatrical, architectural setting. Pièce de résistance is a large female nude reclining on a pedestal that is part rock, part tilework. Her head a mask, her body an empty skin – not yet fully rounded out, or squeezed out and discarded? – she confronts the viewer with an impenetrable gaze. Remnants of chains and glazes emulating weathered azulejos suggest that time is still a long way from healing all wounds.
Jonat Deelstra
Marine Protected Areas in the Dutch North-Sea are habitually disturbed by bottom trawlers. To provide the areas with additional protection, Jonat Deelstra wants to turn them into underwater graveyards, where grave rest has to be honoured just as it is on land. During his residency, he built several ceramic vessels large enough to hold a folded dead person’s body. Sunk to the bottom of the sea, the vessels will attract marine life like molluscs, weeds, crabs or starfish to restore the habitats damaged by commercial fishing. Deelstra also created open ceramic coffins reminiscent of small boats or rectangular shells to bury the deceased in a more traditional, horizontal position. Marine scientists welcome his ecological activism and funeral directors are happy to include this seaman’s grave in their services. Meanwhile, Deelstra’s grandfather found a final resting place off the coast from Kenya, in a coral reef restoration zone.
Marieke Coppens
If clay were a language, Marieke Coppens was an analphabetic. In preparation of her EKWC residency the artist and guru learned Hittite, an extinct language written in cuneiform script on clay tablets. In this light, it only made sense for her to use the Pollard script, an alphabet developed for an unwritten Southeast Asian language, to decorate her works. These include an imperfect infinite circle and an imperfect infinite square, made up of tiles embossed with fluorescent signs that emit an otherworldly glow in the dark. The mosaics don’t communicate a specific message; the signs and tiles form an endless pattern of repetition and difference. Coppens made the signs mixing fluorescent pigments with Egyptian paste, a self-glazing mass fired at low temperatures. To offset her carbon footprint, the artist worked as a volunteer planting trees (@meerbomen.nu) for at least 29 hours, which equals 10% of her total EKWC budget.
