The Netherlands at the Venice Biennale: art that lures you into other worlds

He remembers it well from his early youth when he grew up in Moengo, a bauxite mining town in the Surinamese rainforest. How the Maroons, descendants of refugee enslaved Africans, honored their ancestors during Winti-rituals. How they clothed themselves in shoulder cloths with the most beautiful geometrical patterns and color planes, sown together like patchworks. Years later, when Remy Jungerman (1959) started his studies, first at the Academie voor Hoger Kunst en Cultuur Onderwijs in Paramaribo, and subsequently at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, he discovered modernist movements such as De Stijl. He saw how much the grids of Piet Mondrian and the color combinations of Theo van Doesburg had in common with the shoulder cloths and the checkered textiles of the Maroons.

Now, as an artist, Jungerman is still fascinated by the journey of these abstract patterns, from Africa to the Americas, and by the influence they had on the arts. In his works, on display starting next week at the Venice Biennale together with murals by Iris Kensmil, he mixes motives from Maroon culture with geometrics from De Stijl [The Style]. He makes an installation, Visiting Deities, inspired by the kabra tafra from the Winti-religion: a sacrificial table set for the ancestors. Hanging above it are three abstract sculptures, inspired by an oracle that is worn on the head during pilgrimages to visit the gods at several locations in the forest. The works echo the geometrics of Style-architect Gerrit Rietveld, the designer of the Dutch pavilion.

“I myself came to Europe from the Amazon region”, says Jungerman several weeks before the Biennale is about to burst on the scene. “Because of this my view is different than that of European artists. I draw on other sources. I consider myself lucky that I went to the academy in Suriname, and that I was introduced to Western as well as non-Western art history there. For me, that personal background is important in order to understand the imagery of De Stijl. I got a much better ‘feel’ for those works of art when I linked them to the patterns of the Maroons.”

“‘Artists from non-Dutch descent’, that felt like ethnic profiling” – Iris Kensmil

Future Oriented

Iris Kensmil (1970) grew up in the Netherlands, as a child from Surinamese parents. She studied painting at the Minerva Academie in Groningen. “I learned a lot about art history there”, she says, “but I did feel as though I was missing something.” Art from black history hardly ever came up, except for maybe as a source of inspiration to Picasso. I heard nothing about the regions where my parents come from. I went in search of that myself later on.”

In Venice, Kensmil will fill the walls of the Rietveld-pavilion with three monumental murals. Two of those, The New Utopia Begins Here #1 and #2, honor the thinking of black feminists through painted portraits. In that light, she portrayed journalist and activist Claudia Jones, but also DJ Sister Nancy, sf-author Octavia E. Butler and poet Audre Lorde – women from different countries and times who have all remained underexposed, at least in the Netherlands. Kensmil integrates this in a composition that is based on the work of two modernist artists: Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich.

“Important in my choice for these women, was that their visions were future-oriented”, says Kensmil. “That they strived for an inclusive world in their writing or in their music. It was difficult to find good photos of some women from the twenties. From others, from the eighties and nineties, images are a lot easier to find. Initially I used only gray hues, but gradually I also added colors to the portraits. I didn’t want to paint only historical figures, but also women who are still important in the here and now. The light in the portraits looks as though it comes from within, giving these women a certain liveliness, but also a historical relevance.”

What connects the two artists, is the way in which they use the abstract imagery of modernism to bring their own themes to the forefront. “Modernism is the dominant culture”, says Jungerman. “For me as an artist, there was no other ‘ism’ that I could attach myself to. At a certain point, I realized that I could use De Stijl as a point of entry, to then tell my own story. So that you initially lure the viewers in with familiar shapes, only to subsequently take them along into other worlds.”

What is the other story? “The part that you don’t see in Western art history. Due to the one-sided way of looking at art in Europe, geometry in the arts is claimed by modernism. That single truth is considered the universal story. I want to show that that story is too limited.” According to Jungerman, the diversity in our society is poorly reflected in many European museums. “This makes you think that there should be more. I want to make new, future-oriented images. I hope that my work can serve as a source of inspiration for the next generation, a generation without color.”

“To me, the Biennale and the Rietveld pavilion embody the utopia of modernism”, says Kensmil. “But it’s a one-sided ideal. Modernism has a much richer history than is generally known. In the western black counter-movements it has developed quite differently. This is why I supplement it with the vision of black female utopians.”

A Next Step

The curator who has brought Remy Jungerman and Iris Kensmil together, Benno Tempel (1972), is the director of the Style-museum par excellence: the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. He has previously acquired work from Kensmil for his museum, and in 2015 he made an exhibition with Jungerman. “What I particularly like about their work, is that they not only question the Western art history, but that they also take the next step. Both of them dare to look at progress in a utopian way. They try to feed the present with the past and thus try to influence the present.”

As an example, Tempel names the work of Jungerman. “Remy has a fascination for patterns that travel throughout the world and settle down everywhere, just like seeds taken along by the wind. As soon as they take root, they make adjustments to that which already exists in that particular place. To me that’s a beautiful metaphor for the growth that can come from cultural influencing and fusing.”

Initially, a third artist, Stanley Brouwn who passed away in 2017, was also part of the exhibition concept. Tempel intended to display several of his sculptures. But the day after the announcement Brouwn’s widow filed an objection. “It was painful, the way in which that process went”, says Temple now. “But we quickly decided: if it is that sensitive, especially to the next of kin, then we were not going to show his work. It was exactly a year after his passing, almost to the day. The widow was in the middle of a real mourning process. She also said: I cannot stop you. Out of respect for her, we decided not to include Brouwn’s work.”

The reactions in the press were quite harsh. The organizer, the Mondrian Fund was accused of amateurism. In the Volkskrant Tempel’s concept was called “as sturdy as elastic”. There was also criticism that Brouwn, just like Kensmil and Jungerman, an artist from Surinamese descent but who always kept his biography strictly separate from his work, would be shown here in a context of ‘black identity’.

Tempel still gets angry when he thinks of that period. “There was a lot said that was not correct. The Volkskrant wrote about “three artists from non-Dutch descent“. I thought that was outrageous. These artists were educated in the Netherlands, they have had museum exhibits here. Everything they have done throughout their artistic lives, started in the Netherlands. That same paper also wrote that so much attention for “at the same time three artists” with a non-Dutch background was artificial. In my point of view that criticism only proves how spot on we are. It is the right time to do this. These themes are important, especially now.”

‘I hope that my work will serve as inspiration for the next generation. A generation without color’ – Remy Jungerman

“It felt like ethnic profiling”, says Iris Kensmil, that we were consistently referred to as ‘artists from Surinamese descent’. As if you are put aside, while you are just Dutch.” Jungerman: “I live in the Netherlands longer than I have lived in Suriname.”

Invisible

The fact that they can now represent the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale, an event that historically emerged as a showcase for rich, colonial powers, feels like a victory. “The trajectory that many of my ancestors went through to reach where we are today, was long and painful”, says Jungerman. “In the pavilion, I want to honor the people that fought for that. Hence the sacrificial table. In the Winti it is arranged especially for the ancestors. Only when you have all your ancestors together, you are able to cleanse the past, in order to come to a new conversation.”

Jungerman sees Stanley Brouwn as an ‘ancestor’ as well. “He has always been important to me, as a fellow countryman and as a man of color.” He talks about how he sometimes wished that he was Brouwn: an artist without biography. “Especially in the period 1998-2002, when State Secretary of Culture Rick van der Ploeg (PvdA) implemented a policy of positive discrimination. At that time, artists such as Gillion Grantsaan, Michael Tedja and myself, had already conquered a position in the art world. We exhibited in the Stedelijk, participated in European shows. We never questioned ourselves about how it was to be a black artist. Up until the moment that we ended up on an island by that preferential policy of Van der Ploeg. All of a sudden, we were allochtoon. At that time, I did think: Brouwn had the right idea back then. In 1972, he made the decision to become invisible. Because otherwise you just don’t have a life.”

Although Brouwn’s work will not be physically present in Venice, his spirit will surely be around. Both artists will honor him. “I take Stanley along in the rhythm of my work”, says Jungerman. The sculpture Promise IV is a tribute to him. It is a vertical piece, in which wooden slats shoot up into the sky like skyscrapers. On it the measurements of Brouwn’s body – which he also used often in his art – are drawn: the ell, feet and step. I have added my own measurements to it.”

What I admire in Brouwn, says Kensmil, “is that he always guarded the way his work was handled.” Her work Beyond the Burden of Representation is about that authenticity. “It is an installation about artists who want to protect the individuality in their work, against critics, against the art world, and against obvious judgements. It is essential to the freedom of the artist, that he can choose his own strategy. I made a mural full of historical art works, from Stanley Brouwn, but for example also from On Kawara, Adrian Piper and Charlotte Posenenske – all artists who determined their own concept of art.”

“Art is a trajectory in which you must have a lot of patience”, adds Jungerman. “Sometimes when you look around, you see the hurried way in which artists make work for the market. But the road to the big stage is a long one. If you stay close to yourself and do the things you need to do, you will ultimately be rewarded.”

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Documentary The Measurement of Presence by Gerrit Scheurs.

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Also read the necrology of Stanley Brouwn: De man die uit zijn werk verdween [The man who disappeared from his work]

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This article was previously published in Dutch in NRC Handelsblad on May 1, 2019 and was written by Sandra Smallenburg. The original Dutch text was posted in the previous blog post.

TEXT Sandra Smallenburg, born in 1973, studied art history at the Universiteit Leiden. She is art editor at NRC since 2001. In 2015 her book Expeditie Land Art was published by De Bezige Bij.

TRANSLATION Cassandra Gummels-Relyveld, 2019