Linda Verkaaik

My work consists of autonomous sculptures and transparent panels, architectural applications and landscape projects. I work for commissions but also in free projects. Sometimes with light, soundscape, performances or film projection. My work has many details within a stylistic organic form.
Color and texts are there to express and discover the stories and layers behind the first image.
I work in public space for 30 years and have good experiences with placing my work among all populations.
I prefer to make total events... where all arts are connected, to experience it: sculptural image, sound, projection, motion ...
Landart projects I realized on the Terschellings Oerolfestival and the walk on the bridge for the HEM (Utrecht) are dearest to me. Nature and weather elements give your work something extra, something you cannot think of beforehand.

My work is socially oriented. What is happening in the world has similarities with my personal life, and I try to distill my own story from it. Where does it affect me? Why does it affect me? That's where I want to make the connection: interweaving my story with the urgency of a place, the shared symbols and narratives from the past and the present. This way an image not only becomes my personal expression but has a greater reach.

Since 1992 I have been making works in public spaces, often in consultation with residents/users. I am aware of who I am making it for and I think it is important that the target group has recognition. That what lives in a community also becomes experienceable. During my academic years (1970/1980), statues in public spaces were regularly defaced and destroyed. From my experience, communication appears to be one of the most important conditions for art in public space. Because the statue is in the immediate vicinity, the residents are confronted with it and want to find their stories in it. I therefore consider it essential to reach out(*) to the public. With their information I weave my own themes into a more universal whole, so that the images are understood by many layers of the population. This is what I experience as valuable about an assignment situation: you make it specific to a location or experience. That is so different from 'storage' of a purchased image.

(*) “In public spaces I also make images with a function, benches based on a story. Function and recognisability in an image is then the temptation, the handle. The image comes to life because people start using it, connect with it and it becomes the identity of a place to live or stay. In this way I try to involve the viewer in that story.” I usually approach themes from multiple angles and work with different materials and techniques, in order to get closer to an essence, but I also reuse my themes and subjects for deeper research. I have never shied away from experimentation in my work and am always looking for other ways to express what I have in my head.