2019

Taste the Golden Age

Installation and Collage, Mixed Media (rice paper, fabrics, food)

Historically colonisation was born with the aim to develop “trade routes” for spices like pepper, clove, and nutmeg. In the name of “trade”, many indigenous population has been wiped out in order for the foreign businessmen to set up post for voyage and set up plantation.  And this colonial connection has been ebbed in the food we consume ever since. Nowadays the easily accessible spices or food come onto our dinner table under the neutralised idea of globalisation instead of being looked at critically. We tend to neglect the history it carries along as well as the continuous present where childhood has been taken away for sweet chocolate, workers being locked up on islands for life in order to fish for shrimps so we consumers can afford at a low price,  and avocado, asparagus, soy beans or palm oil - as healthy or organic as we promote them to be - are exhausting underground water or even causing heavy deforestation.

My project “Taste the Golden Age” mingles the typical Dutch Golden Age images - like the maritime painting, cartography, still life painting of luxurious food, portraits of powerful people - in an intuitive and emotional way. In letting the images guide me through my understanding of the causes and effects, I also want to tackle into the complexity and the contradiction of the entangled history and present. I am very aware, I am not innocent from this system. I am very much part of it as everyone else. By confronting the uncomfortableness of my own being and doing in my everyday practice, I wish for a deeper understanding to bring about actual change of in choices in life, starting from myself.