‘Seeing, Saying’ is an exhibition that encourages introspection and dialogue surrounding the intricacies of perception, communication, and the fluidity of language. 
  

Seeing, Saying



Artists

Curator
Marketing
  • Maaike van Everdingen

Photography

On show from 16.09.2022 to 15.10.2022
Julia July
Manju Sharma
Liza Wolters


Language ━ a dance of sound and symbols ━ has always interacted with art. It is a means of communication and a medium of raw emotion.
Manju Sharma (b. 1972 India) is a visual artist - artist writer. She was brought up in the UK and now lives and works in The Netherlands. In her art practice, Sharma is developing the concepts of ‘never leaving never arriving’ through the practice of colonial repair, and by examining ‘partition’ and its effect on mental health.

Through the personal and the every day, she unfolds generational migration narratives embedded in social and geopolitical landscapes. She uses situated biographies as a methodology for story-telling in the visual arts to focus and explore the self and its relatedness to the world that she wishes to grasp and care for. Her work explores modes of translating personal and intergenerational memories through poetical languaging consisting of poetic film essays, story-telling performances, sewing, and drawing-painting.

By studying and interpreting daily practices she treats visual arts as an effective site that can allow people to find their voice. Her work aims to search for hidden narratives in story-telling practices, develop one’s own being and identity, demonstrate the fluidity of our borders both external and internal, and provide care at thresholds of metamorphosis.

Her art practice offers escape routes, where the spiritual and speculative healing, brings courage and hopefulness when ‘never leaving never arriving’.  


We’re shouting sonnets without saying a word. The pulse of human connection evokes the sensation of spoken syllables.

Liza Wolters’ work can be seen as an ongoing process of arranging, analysing, and archiving—a fluid place of storage. A method to understand the world, to interrogate positions, and to explore other ways of seeing. This in turn always gives rise to new dialogues with her surroundings, with fellow artists, with her public; with fellow species.
Fellow breathing species, objects, a space: they all exist in relation to you and vice versa. And it is in this relation, between perceiving and being perceived, between moving forward and looking back, between you and me, where we find the essence of being human. In her practice, Liza Wolters recognises and investigates the value of this liminal space.

She does this by consciously taking on the role of the artist-errant. While she roves, she observes and captures her surroundings in photographs, on video, and in words. Coincidental temporalities can appear as if they’re staged, as Liza looks for the balance between the recognizable aspects of a place or situation and their abstraction in her work. Nevertheless, these are very much real finds, interwoven with her own memories and associations.

These elements lay the foundation of her work: an ever-growing archive of images and text that unfolds in a constant arrangement and rearrangement of material. In exhibitions, publications, collaborations, and installations, materials from the archive are juxtaposed with observations recorded on location and in response to the situation. In these scenographic interventions,  individual fragments temporarily come together as a new momentum. The chosen titles in her work are based on conversations and slips of the tongue from herself and others.


Or as we say in Dutch: “WAT ZEGGIE?”
Julia July focust zich op het observeren, associëren, en heroverwegen van het concept natuur. Het opzoeken van diverse perspectieven en definities, evenals de manier waarop mensen verbinding ervaren met onze prachtige buitenwereld. Julia July (b. 1998) werkt op een analytische manier. Ze is ervan overtuigd dat inzoomen op de kleinste dingen tot de grootste verrassingen kan leiden.
TROEF wants to draw attention to the relationships and boundaries between (wo)men and language.

Seeing, Saying was on show from 01.09.2023 to 30.09.2023. Many gratitudes to the artists for being part of this exhibition.