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05_MP_Dutch artists at Venice Biennale-live text-44-53.indd 44 22/04/19 3:10 PM Remy Jungerman, “Initiands,” 2015, painted wood, cotton textile, kaolin, bottles, 112 x 96 x 16 in./ 284 x 244 x 41 cm.

BLENDING IDENTITIES AT THE VENICE BIENNALE, DUTCH PAVILION ARTISTS COMBINE MODERNISM WITH FORGOTTEN COLONIAL HISTORIES BY NINA SIEGAL PHOTO© AATJAN RENDERS AATJAN PHOTO©

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05_MP_Dutch artists at Venice Biennale-live text-44-53.indd 45 22/04/19 3:10 PM 05_MP_Dutch artists atVenice Biennale-live text-44-53.indd 46 46 MODERN PAINTERS PAINTERS MODERN MAY 2019 BLOUINARTINFO.COM BLOUINARTINFO.COM Remy Remy Jungerman of Portrait

Iris Iris Kensmil Portrait of Portrait

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BOTH IMAGES COURTESY KHALID AMAKRAN

PHOTO© AATJAN RENDERS Remy Jungerman, “Horizontal Vodupaati,”2017, cotton textile, kaolin, wood, acrylic and nails, 14 × 76 × 4 in./ 36 × 193 × 10 cm.

ortraits of the activist Amy large. “That one is just a test,” said Kensmil of Ashwood Garvey, the writer the wall mural. “In Venice, she will take up a Octavia Butler and the Jamaican whole wall, and the portrait will stand on its emcee Sister Nancy are propped own in the space.” Seven other portraits of black against the back wall of Iris women utopian thinkers will be presented on Kensmil’s light-flled studio in canvasses of about fve feet tall, on a wall PAmsterdam, under a 10-foot mural of Audre painted with large, abstract shapes. Lorde, the African-American poet who once Kensmil is one of two artists who will wrote, “When we speak we are afraid our words represent the Netherlands this year at Venice, will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are in the dual exhibition, “The Measurement of silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to Presence.” The other is Remy Jungerman, who speak.” will show a series of abstracts sculptures “in The portraits are all part of Kensmil’s conversation” with Kensmil’s work. installation “The New Utopia Begins Here,” Kensmil and Jungerman are both people of which would soon be shipped off to Italy, to be color with familial links to , a former presented in the Dutch pavilion of the 58th Dutch colony. Kensmil was born in edition of the Venice Biennale. Kensmil will also Amsterdam, and lived from the ages of 1 to 9 in recreate the mural of Lorde there, only twice as Suriname; Jungerman was born in Suriname BOTH IMAGES COURTESY KHALID AMAKRAN KHALID COURTESY IMAGES BOTH RENDERS AATJAN PHOTO©

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05_MP_Dutch artists at Venice Biennale-live text-44-53.indd 47 22/04/19 3:10 PM 05_MP_Dutch artists atVenice Biennale-live text-44-53.indd 48 48 MODERN PAINTERS PAINTERS MODERN MAY 2019 BLOUINARTINFO.COM BLOUINARTINFO.COM 165 x 118 cm. paper, on charcoal #1,Feminist 2018, for “Study Black Iris Kensmil,

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PHOTO: GERT JAN VAN ROOIJ

PHOTO© AATJAN RENDERS PHOTO: GERT JAN VAN ROOIJ 05_MP_Dutch artists atVenice Biennale-live text-44-53.indd 49

PHOTO© AATJAN RENDERS fguration. also combines abstract Modernist forms with black identity, and black liberation struggles. She Dumas, and is concerned with the formation of artists such as Gerhard Richter and Marlene works in the realist tradition of Contemporary traders. Africans brought to the country by Dutch slave , a system developed by enslaved Surinamese who practice the Winti them, he works with cloths used by architectonics of Gerrit Rietveld. But to make aesthetics of Piet Mondrian and the compositions that reference both the De Stijl see theaestheticlinkbetweentwoartists. rather thanonanartisticconcept. seems tobeonthe ‘concept ofnationalidentity’” much as call it “artifcial” because “the emphasis is over.” It didn’t criticize the choice of artists so matter of time. The Biennale as a white bulwark Volkskrant wrote in an article, “It was just a and controversy. The Dutch local newspaper de Biennale has been the source of both celebration colony are representing the Netherlands at the and movedtotheNetherlandsasayoungman. and controversy source of both celebration Biennale has been the Netherlands at the representing the Dutch colony are fromartists aformer factThe that two Kensmil, a f gurative painter, said that she Jungerman creates abstract, sculptural It might be true that it’s initially diffcult to The factthattwoartistsfromaformerDutch 65 65 x 9 x 8,7 in./166 X 23 X 22 cm. nails, wood, acrylic, kaolin, textile, cotton Neseki,” “ 2017, Remy Jungerman,

22/04/19 3:10PM Iris Kensmil, installation view at “Club Solo,” 2015.

“The big relationship between them is seen together, seem like a very logical Modernism,” said Benno Tempel, director of the combination.” Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, who proposed Tempel said that the kind of discussion that and curated the Biennale show. “They are both erupted in the Dutch press about the selection in debt to the legacy of Modernism, but they of the two artists “proves how much trouble the both bring it together with ideas and infuences Dutch and Dutch journalists have in accepting from other places in the world. They both that people of color have a long tradition in this elaborated on the form language and, each in country and have been part of the art world for their own way, made it richer, took it further.” a long time,” said Tempel. “If you compare it He added, “The feeling of movement and with Britain or the United States, the Dutch are speed will draw them together, and so will the lagging behind dramatically.” sense of monumentality — they both have a Kensmil said that her concept for the show kind of monumental scale and that will, when came out of the fact that the Dutch pavilion was @CLUB SOLO (P) GERT-JAN VAN ROOIJ VAN GERT-JAN (P) SOLO @CLUB PHOTO: GERT JAN ROOIJ

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05_MP_Dutch artists at Venice Biennale-live text-44-53.indd 50 22/04/19 3:10 PM Iris Kensmil, “Archiving future history,” 2017, pastel on paper, 227 x 125 cm.

designed by Rietveld, who was part of the post- World War I De Stijl movement, co-founded by Mondrian. “Mondrian stood for utopia, the making of a new world,” she said. “For me the question was: Where is the black modernity?” She decided to explore the Black Archives, a specialized library founded a few years ago in Amsterdam, where she discovered stories from what she calls “hidden voices of intergenerational resistance.” “I hope that it will start up a conversation because these women aren’t familiar to a lot of people — even I had to dig in there to fnd out something about their histories — and a lot of them wrote and published and stood for something that is important for everybody,” she said in an interview. She paused and added, “And if you don’t want to know anything about them, you can also just enjoy the way of painting. That’s also good for me.” While Kensmil is working with “forgotten” modern thinkers, Jungerman is exploring older traditions and ideas that were actively suppressed by the Dutch colonizers in Suriname. In his work, he employs cloth fabrics and other ritual materials associated with the Winti , which the Dutch banned in 1874, declaring it a demonic cult practice. People of African descent in Suriname were forced to convert to , and speak only Dutch. It didn’t work; many people continued to practice in secrecy, until Suriname gained independence in 1975 and the ban was lifted. Jungerman remembers his mother @CLUB SOLO (P) GERT-JAN VAN ROOIJ VAN GERT-JAN (P) SOLO @CLUB PHOTO: GERT JAN ROOIJ

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05_MP_Dutch artists at Venice Biennale-live text-44-53.indd 51 22/04/19 3:10 PM Remy Jungerman, “FODU composition 24,” 2015, cotton textile, wood, bottle, 161 x 106 x 14 in. / 410 x 270 x 35 cm. Remy Jungerman, 2017, solo exhibition view, “IN TRANSIT, 38CC,” Delft,” NL.

practicing traditional Winti when he was a boy, and as an adult he has learned as much as “Visiting Deities” he can about the geometrical patterns and color symbolism of traditional Maroon fabrics. He has incorporated these into his sculptural works, is based on the made of wood planks and grids and hung from the ceiling, reminiscent both of altars and idea of the kabla ships. In one room, Jungerman has built a sculptural table, 26 feet long, made up of 14 tafra, a ritual paintings using Winti fabrics, that ft into one another like a puzzle. The work, entitled “Visiting table that is Deities” is based on the idea of the kabla tafra, a ritual table that is intended to invite the spirits of dead ancestors together. The table is covered with intended to invite kaolin, a powdery white clay often used in cleansing rituals — the clay from which porcelain is made — and the foor underneath is made of the spirits of dead dry cracked earth. “I can call the ancestors from the greater ancestors together Dutch world around the table together,” he said in an interview at his studio. “A pavilion like this is BOTH IMAGES PHOTO© AATJAN RENDERS AATJAN PHOTO© IMAGES BOTH RENDERS AATJAN PHOTO© IMAGES BOTH

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05_MP_Dutch artists at Venice Biennale-live text-44-53.indd 52 22/04/19 3:10 PM LEFT: Remy Jungerman, “Horizontal Obeah Geengesitonu,” 2018. Remy Jungerman, “FODU. Ultimate Resistance,” 2014, cotton textile, wood, kaolin, 47 x 46 x 98 in./ 118 x 118 x 248 cm.

a very nationalistic statement, and with me being there now we have an opportunity to bring all the ancestors together to purify certain things. We can address the elephants in the room.” Kensmil feels that her works and Jungerman’s speak to one another. “For me, it’s more about the idea that you enter a Futurist space, and for Remy it’s more about the idea that cultures come together. So I think it works perfectly together; the works strengthen each other.”MP BOTH IMAGES PHOTO© AATJAN RENDERS AATJAN PHOTO© IMAGES BOTH RENDERS AATJAN PHOTO© IMAGES BOTH

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05_MP_Dutch artists at Venice Biennale-live text-44-53.indd 53 22/04/19 3:10 PM