What does the ideal artist’s studio look like? How much time does an artist spend there? Is it a sacred place? This week in 'The Artist’s studio' series: TINKEBELL (age 42) whose Tata Steel series will be on display at Torch Gallery during the Amsterdam Art Week later this month.
Do you visit your studio every day?
Yes and no, but that is mainly a semantic issue: what do we mean by a studio? When you mean the physical space, which people recognize as a typical artist studio, the answer is: it depends on the project I'm working on at the time. Today, and for the past eight months, the answer would be yes. When the question means: do you make art every day? Then the answer is always: "Yes."
What time do you leave for your studio, and how: on foot, by bicycle, public transport or car?
There are artists who call themselves painters or sculptors. For them it makes sense to always work in (more or less) the same space and to have a certain rhythm. That’s different in my practice. Whereas for many makers a medium, material or technique forms the basis, the starting point for me is always a story to tell. That starts very globally. For example, I'm curious about a place like Tomioka, a village near the nuclear power plant in Fukushima. Then I travel there, and from the moment I arrive Tomioka is my workspace. Without a plan or idea I walk around there, sometimes for weeks at a time until I recognize patterns and people and consequently immediately know when something remarkable happens.
What I find there, what strikes me there and what happens to me there, that is what I will work with. In Tomioka, for example, it was the discovery that a remarkably large number of four-leaf clovers grew on decontaminated plots of demolished houses – where clean earth had been dumped to reduce radiation levels. Such a discovery is pure poetry, and can only be made through those weeks of utmost concentration.
Unlike periods during which I use an entire village or city as a workspace, I have locked myself up in a studio over the past year - very cliché. First in the basement of my own house, later, when it became too small and too dirty, I received a very kind offer from the Van der Valk Hotel Amsterdam Zuidas: they have three studios available in their above-ground parking garage and I was allowed to use one for free.
For the past eight months I've been working there almost seven days a week, every day from morning (by metro) to late afternoon (by metro, or if I felt poorly by taxi back) on a project. in which I extract fine and coarse dust from Tata Steel from dune sand from Wijk aan Zee with a magnet. I used this Tata dust – which is very toxic and sickening – as material for a large series of works that will be on display at Torch Gallery next month: Flora Tata Metallica.
Do you hold on to certain rituals in your studio? Music or silence?
While working on 'Flora Tata Metallica', yes. The extraction of fine and coarse dust is painstaking work and extremely boring. Every day I went through the sand with magnets for hours on end. What helped to keep up the pace was loud music, preferably from the 90s, with a good beat. I think it's very good that the studio was soundproofed, because I sang my lungs out and that was definitely not an angelic song.
Whenever I had extracted enough Tata dust to make a new canvas, I blew that dust (over a flower collage) onto my canvas. That blowing was actually the most problematic part of the job, because then the dust starts to dust and you breathe in a lot. I always found myself getting dizzy and getting headaches, so I always did this job at the end of the day. I often crawled into bed before 7 p.m. sick from working with that stuff. So it were quite intense working days that usually ended early.
Incidentally, looking back at all the other projects I've done over the past 20, 25 years, these working days aren't typical. Usually I function best in total silence and only a much smaller part of my work consists of actually physically making something.
How important is light to you?
That depends on the project, then again, I'm not a painter. Light is especially nice for my mood (I really like the sun and fresh air), but for the work itself it usually doesn't matter that much.
What does your work process look like? Do you work everywhere and all the time or does work only commence the moment you enter your studio?
My work continues always and everywhere. Every room where my name is on the door turns into a studio. It's always been like that and I can't do otherwise, I'm afraid.
How much time do you spend on average per day in your studio?
I get up, set to work and at some point fall asleep again.
Is your studio a sacred place?
Yes. In fact, I'm saying that my house and my garden are too. Nothing is there without a reason. And almost everything is either material or part of research, or they are objects that have a soul in them that is important to me. The latter is especially important because it can be very small things. Petals that I picked up in certain places – very meaningful to me. Notes or cards, ping-pong balls from a performance performed at the memorial of a deceased friend, a pen my grandmother once wrote down something with, a cheap watch that I got from children in a refugee camp – meaningless to visitors , but in my head it says there very large ‘DO NOT TOUCH THIS AND DEFINITELY DO NOT BREATH HERE’ The curtains are partly cloths that were used to set the tables during my wedding party, in a past life, the other part are fabrics I bought in Bangladesh from street vendors a year after the Rana Plaza disaster that killed 1,138 textile workers. The artworks on the walls are all made by friends, their children or my brother and sister’s children.
There are stones that I came up with from different oceans and stuffed butterflies brought from every continent, and I remember everything about the place and the people who were there. There is a box of chocolates 'not there to eat!' that I got from the Afghan Feda Amiri, who I got from Kabul in 2015 after the Netherlands had deported him there. I made a film about him and his situation, entitled 'DIY#1 (raw cut)'.
He gave me the chocolates to thank me when I visited him in India. The cuddly toy on my closet is a cat that my friend Ellen Deckwitz made for me from a bag as a Christmas present, the jars of honey are not for consumption but part of a collection (from red zone Fukushima, made by ex-FARC fighters in Colombia, from Afghanistan, Cuba and Lesvos).
Oh, and cupboards full of books, newspaper clippings and printed files about anything and everything. Also sacred..
Do you receive visits there; collectors, curators or fellow artists?
Seldomly. Although I had recently decided that I actually wanted to change that. I even started looking for a new permanent studio with the aim of not only working there, but building something that could also be a meeting place. Something where I could invite people, on the one hand to show my work, while on the other hand it would also give me the opportunity to share knowledge and have conversations about art, the world, etc. I have the feeling that I have reached a phase where this is becoming increasingly important, because I have so many stories and there are so many young artists who benefit from my network and experience.
I have found that space. In the De Markthal, located at the closed Food Center in Amsterdam West. I had gone through a whole selection procedure, already paid the deposit and put some stuff in the room, the contract and the key transfer were just a formality.
Only then it turned out that the administrator had included a clause in the contract stating: 'It is not allowed to organize lectures, presentations or exhibitions in the rented space'. It was impossible to deviate from this clause and absolutely nothing could be added, stating that open studio days were accepted. So that party was cancelled.
What is the most beautiful studio you have ever seen?
Janine Abbring has interviewed Marina Abramovic in her studio just outside New York for the program 'Wintergasten'. When she was back in the Netherlands, Janine sent me an app with some photos she had taken in the colossal studio with a huge archive, located at Abramovic' 'Star House'. That made me really envious. Especially all cabinets with large labelled bins, on which it was stated exactly which relic was used for each performance. It’s a dream that have such great overview!
What is hopeful (for me) is that Marina didn't really became a household name when she was in her 40’s. So this is still an achievable life goal for me.
What does the ideal studio look like?
The ideal studio is a home studio with an infinite amount of space, both inside and out. With lots of greenery, yet within the city. By Amsterdam standards, I currently have a spacious living-work space of about 80 m2 with a 60 m2 garden. I am extremely grateful for that, because for many artists that is already an impossibility in this city. But to really do what I want to do I need at least five times this amount of space.