Mayke Verhoeven
The Netherlands
In the work of Mayke Verhoeven 'vulnerability' and 'memories' are important themes. Her images and arrangements have a tranquil character. Her sugar confectionery looks like solidified memories from a bygone era. Verhoeven is fascinated by how people store and conserve memories. By combining different objects she creates a new story and makes the personal, universal. It is not for nothing that Verhoeven uses materials such as sugar. In doing so, she emphasizes vulnerability and transience. Where she previously worked in lead (lead does not perish), she now opts for a strong counterpart. Her work has a link with 19th century romanticism in which a penchant for the past and a glorification of loneliness can be seen. Her sense of composition and technical mastery make her work an aesthetic experience that leaves enough room for the viewer's own interpretation and association.
Response to the question:
“WRITTEN IN STONE”
and so, it can happen that someone holds on to a shirt for all his life because it reminds him of a baby. The baby is no longer there. only the shirt is left. the thing is as much a souvenir as a relic.
-Kristien Hemmerechts
My work has a link with 19th century romance. Herein lies a longing for the past and the glorification of loneliness. A story that has been told is the story about the glass man. This man thinks his bones are made of glass. They could already break with a slight bump. To prevent this, the man closes himself off in his own house. In a way that I can put an object that I want to protect under a bell jar.
Nowadays we would consider the man of glass to be sick. In that time, people looked at him in a different way. This condition was seen as a disease for the elite. The man was a wise melancholic. I have therefore chosen to process the sugar in a way that makes it look like crystal. An everyday material that is found in many of our foods but is mainly associated with the sweetness of candy is now sometimes seen as poison. I like the contrast in this and try to process the sugar, that now can even stand for poison, in an aesthetic way. The sugar and the man of glass represent the fragile and transient nature of everything.
In the beginning of the residency I was busy with the story of the Cor. Cor is someone who holds on to everything she has ever owned. A piece of fabric can be repaired over and over again. The stiches are the remains of what has happened with it. Like a scar on your skin.
Cor feels fragile in a different way. She thinks the outside world wants to harm her and she needs to protect herself. She hardly comes outside of her house. In her house it looks like time has stood still.
Cor reminds me of the ‘man of glass’. This theme is from all times. For me Cor is a contemporary ‘man of glass’.
The first thing I noticed while walking in the streets of Naples were all the altars with their embellishment and mostly fake flowers. It reminded me of a thing that I was already looking into. These are the 17th century still live paintings. Especially the flower still lives. In the 17th century big colorful bouquets in vases were painted. You would assume that the painter had this still live in front of him when he painted it, but when you look closer you notice that the bouquet would be too big to even fit in the vase. Also, the flowers that are painted would never bloom in the same period. Later on, you see that withing the bouquet all kinds of insects are hidden.
The flowers and insects stand for the temporality and fragility of life. Some of the still lives point directly to the vanitas theme. Vanitas is a theme in art that stands for vanity and emptiness. Certain objects in still lives, like skulls, extinguished candles and withered flowers, the vanity, temporality and meaninglessness of our possessions is visualized.
If these still lives are all about decay, temporality and fragileness. Why did they use such vibrant colors? As a reaction to the original flower still lives, I wanted to make a series of still lives out of sugar where the color is almost gone. In the first period of the residency the still lives turned out completely black, but I still tried to keep the beauty that is within the fragility and decay.
While being in Naples, there was so much to see and I learned about many different stories. After a while looking into themes of the 17th century felt forced.
Another thing I was drawn to and is a big part of Naples is archeology. I question how archeological finds are presented. In Israel for example I saw parts of a Roman building being used as nothing more than an embellishment on a roundabout. You can also see archeological finds taken out of their context and put into a museum's vitrine with only a short global story with it. In Naples you also see that's the real objects of Pompeii are presented in the museum and what’s left at the site of Pompeii are the replicas.
What happens if we find things that we don’t know the heritage of? What will they find many years later of our time? When you're looking into it there are also a lot of finds where we don't know
what they are because there is not much written about it. It appears that most of the time those finds are put into the box of religion.
An interesting example is that inside old water wells they kept on finding shoes. Most of the times these are left shoes. In archeologist's papers they write about how the shoe would have looked and the fact that this happened a lot in the Middle Ages and the Roman times. About why these shoes are there they can only speculate. A lot of speculations point to the direction to it as being a ritual or an offer.
While I was walking through the streets of Naples one of the things that caught my eye was the use of the tufa stone. The first thing that came to mind is that you can see walls that are made out of bricks that are starting to hollow out and look like they are falling apart like sand. I thought at first about how sad it would be if your house would be built on top of a wall that's crumbling down.
When I was looking into this, I noticed that I was too fast with my assumption. Because of its origin and compound these stones are actually really tough and can stand the weather. The tufa stone is still used nowadays. When a volcano, in this case the Vesuvius, bursts and the lava streams into the water the tufa stone gets formed.
Even though the stones come from the same place they can have all kinds of different colors. When the lava streams down it will take everything on its way with it. The color of the tufa is formed with all kinds af ashes and sand that is within the stone. I like the idea that the stone can be a container of all the things that it takes with it. In a way it preserves what it has taken.
I wanted to exaggerate that fact and in an illustrative way make my own tufa stone. When I was thinking about what the stone will take on his way, I looked at the villages that are near the Vesuvius. The famous villages like Pompeii and Ercolano were fisherman's villages. What’s left of those villages could be seen in the stone.
Can this stone preserve a little part of the history of Naples? Can this stone contain the stories of Naples?
In this process I used scientific information and turned it into a narrative work. This short residency was just a start for looking into this subject. I hope to go on with this research and find out more.