The inundation of Walcheren started in 1944 and lasted almost 1.5 years. At that time the
residents with ebb and flow in and around their homes. The colors of the beads in the work
refer to the water, the tides and red coral jewelry.
Red coral was worn by Zeeland women who kept their households afloat
in this difficult time.
Nowadays you can still find 'salt houses' throughout Walcheren, with up to about half of them
meters high, the salt is in the walls and attracts moisture. The soil is still salty and trees
have difficulty growing there.
Every second, an area of forest the size of a football field is cut down around the world.
It's unimaginable how we treat the lungs of our planet.
In the Netherlands, deforestation is even faster in percentage terms than in the Amazon rainforest. I feel very powerless about that and was looking for a way to give it a face as an artist.
So I started suggesting that I preserve the felled logs in aluminum foil.
Then came the beads that proliferate over the aluminum protective layer like moss, fungi or bugs and seem to be looking for a passage to digest the trunk. The beads symbolize our consumer society.
Used carpets form the ground, they open a new path. At the same time, they refer to a time when the economy seemed capable of growing to the sky; the reconstruction in which industrialization really got underway. We are now seeing the disastrous consequences of this.
Each tree trunk is an individual work with its own title that also refers to consumer society. All works of art are made as much as possible from used or reusable materials.
Together the individual works form Felled Forest - Labyrinth of Memories.