An exhibition about the power of visual art.
An exhibition about the power of visual art and the nourishment it offers us something we experienced as a great loss over the past year due to lockdowns and COVID measures. At the same time, those very lockdowns and measures revealed the strong intrinsic drive and resilience of the artist.
Some people stand enviably strong in life. Despite drama, difficulties, and irritations, they remain true to themselves, holding on to their own vision and to new possibilities.
With humor and confidence, they step into the future. Three young female artists in this exhibition approach life in just that way. With humor, a touch of self-mockery, and powerful, distinctive work, they offer hope to the rest of humanity. Their practice is not therapy, nor simply a method for approaching life positively. Their work is the expression of the determination they carry within themselves.
Hilde, Nastia, and Lotte present new work created specifically for this exhibition, alongside existing pieces. They show videos, installations, drawings, and printed textiles.
Lotte Reimann
“Being inspired by film, literature and the documented life, I tend to tell stories. True stories, false stories and stories that seem to be none of the two.” The work of Lotte Reimann is rooted in artistic storytelling, personal insights, and perspectives, presented through books, films, and installations. Newly found and already familiar elements easily connect to open-ended narratives that question the power structures between authors and their addressees, photographers and models.
Lotte Reimann (1982, Lower Saxony, Germany) studied visual art with a focus on photography at the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and completed a residency at the Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht.
Nastia Cistakova
In her practice, Nastia moves between applied art and autonomous design. Her illustrations, animations, video games, and other forms of expression are characterized by a focus on humor and absurdism, while at the same time exposing a serious undertone in her themes. In a unique and personal way, Nastia manages to strike the right chord to make audiences reflect on what they see.
Nastia Cistakova graduated from the Illustration department at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht in 2016. That same year, she exhibited her work at GOGBOT and won first prize in the Blink Youngblood Award.
Hilde Onis
The work of Hilde Onis (1994) is a mix of sculpture, installation, video, and textual interventions, often with a poetic approach. Her work plays with the uniqueness of trivial objects and questions our daily reality. By referencing language systems and transforming object- and material-based hierarchies, her work attempts to reveal underlying structures of human assumptions and constructed semiotic parallels.
Hilde Onis graduated from AKI in 2015 and received a Master of Fine Arts at KASK, Ghent, Belgium, in 2020. She now works in her studio in Rotterdam on sculptures, installations, videos, textual interventions, and scenography. (See the submenu under “behind the scenes” for an impression of her studio.)
Soundscape
Arnold de Boer composed music for the work of Hilde Onis. His minimal-guitar pieces form a beautiful accompaniment to Hilde’s work; they draw you into a certain atmosphere yet just as easily startle you with tones, forms, and ideas.
During the lockdown, these soundscapes and the act of slow looking at artworks were good alternatives to standard exhibition visits that could be easily done at home. Now they serve as a welcome addition to in-person visits.
This exhibition was made possible with support from the Mondriaan Fonds and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Overijssel.