She was given a moment to think about it, but on hearing the question, Mariken Wessels knew immediately who she wanted to share the stand with at Art Rotterdam: Ruth van Beek – someone who, like herself, worked with archive materials. But the similarities go further than that, as can be seen starting this weekend at the Ravestijn Gallery, where Wessels' new sculptures engage in dialogue with Van Beek's collages.
Before attending the Rietveld Academy, Mariken Wessels was an actress for over ten years. You can see this background in her photographic work. Almost all the photos in her books come from discarded photo albums and private archives. Wessels edits them to create characters and stories – uncomfortable stories at that, invariably featuring a female protagonist. Using her characters, Wessels questions the social conventions surrounding the female body. The protagonist in Queen Ann. P.S. belly cut off (2010) struggles with her obesity and self-image to such an extent that she decides to edit her photographs with scissors. In Wessels' most famous book, 2015’s oppressive Taking Off. Henry My Neighbor, we meet Henry and Martha. The former is so obsessed with his wife Martha's naked body that he fanatically photographs her in almost every pose. In 2016, the book earned Wessels the prestigious Author Book Award at the Rencontres d'Arles photo festival.
Wessels' sculptures also revolve around the female body. In her previous series, Miss Cox (Nude – Arising from the Ground) from 2020, she showed the underexposed beauty of obesity. In her new series Mama, Wessels places herself at the end of a long line of male artists who have been making sexualised representations of the female body for centuries. Wessels' interpretation of this is abstract. In doing so, she places the female body in a different context than the dominant male gaze.
Ruth van Beek's collages usually consist of cut-out shapes painted on both sides and combined with photography. The photographs often originate from old manuals and advertising material, such as an archive of American fruits and vegetable growers that she found online and included in Eldorado (2020). Apart from collages, she also makes screen prints and small sculptures, but mainly books. It was The Arrangement (2013) that brought her international recognition, a book in which she combines collages based on flower arrangements with instructional photos of hands showing how to make things. She is currently working on a new book, The Oldest Thing, due to be published next spring by Van Zoetendaal Publishers.
A book of the same name, designed by Willem van Zoetendaal, was published on the occasion of the Fruits of Labor exhibition. In addition to images from the series Mama and The Oldest Thing, it contains poems by Basje Boer and an essay by Roberta Petzoldt.
In the exhibition, your work engages in dialogue. How did this exhibition come about?
MW: My work was to be shown at Art Rotterdam by the Ravestijn Gallery and Jasper asked me who I’d like to share the stand with. He said I could think about it, but I immediately said: Ruth van Beek. It was very intuitive. I instantly envisioned it. Ruth's work appeals to me because, like me, she's not quite into photography and she also works with archive material. Also because of the shapes and choice of colour, though especially because there always seems to be something hidden in her work.
Did you have work ready to show or did you have to work really hard to get everything ready, Ruth?
RvB: Well, it was quite exciting actually. It was pretty short notice and I was also working on a new book (The Oldest Thing, ed.). When I’m working on a book, new work is always created in the process. It’s a kind of interaction. So, I had work ready and accepted Mariken’s invitation. I also thought it was an honour to be asked by Mariken. When we put our work side by side, we saw a kinship between them.
Can you describe this relationship?
RvB: There is something very physical about both our work. In photography, I am always looking to bring objects to life. To circumvent the limitations of the flat surface and to give the image a body, I make collages. I add several image elements together in a visible construction and physically interfere in the photos. By folding, cutting or adding painted areas of colour, I rearrange and manipulate the image until it speaks back as it were. For example, by ‘dressing up’ photos, making the people in them blush or adding small bulges, a seductive illusion is created. The figure is visibly a paper construction, both an object and a representation of an object, yet it speaks to us as something alive, an animated form that evokes emotions: endearment, disgust and wonder.
Physicality has also been a theme in Mariken’s work for years, both in her photography and sculptures. But her work is not only about this. To Mariken, a photo is not a fact, but also something you can edit, something that can acquire more meaning if you cut or slice it. There is also a relationship between our series in terms of shapes. The ceramics and collages form a family as it were. You can see that clearly in the book (Fruits of Labor). When her ceramics become photographs again, you see the similarities in our visual language.
We already briefly touched on one such similarity: you both work with archive material. Where do you get that material from?
RvB: My archive has grown over the past 20 years. Most of it comes from local thrift stores and second-hand bookshops. I collect images from old books and magazines, basically anything I come across, from archaeological catalogues, books about pets, flower arranging to old art books. I cut up the books, take the images out of their context so that they can make new connections with each other in my archive and therefore open to new meanings. I also collect manuals, especially books for housewives. I like books that visually explain how to live with instructions for actions and examples of how it should be done. I also look for footage on eBay. I find it touching and fascinating how people record the things they sell. The effort put into photographing a doll's sock as best as possible, for example, is really heart-warming.
MW: I scour flea markets and my son regularly brings stuff home. I also have a friend in Rotterdam who goes to the market every Saturday, where she has a close relationship with market vendor Frans. He gives her boxes full of belongings. He's actually my biggest dealer. To thank him, I make a Christmas package for him every year. I don't have a properly categorised archive. That doesn't work for me. Sometimes, I get an idea and then I have to search endlessly for a photo to match. That may be time-consuming, but otherwise I don’t mind the preliminary phase because during the search, I come across other interesting images.
I assume you have a preconceived plan. How did set about with The Sculptor, for example, your new series that can also be seen at the exhibition?
MW: Yes, I do have my own framework. The Sculptor was the first time I knew what kind of images I was looking for: those from porn books from the 1970s and 1980s. I wanted a cheerful image and an interior that stands out. Good decor and a bit soft. I am not interested in the actions themselves, but the setting against which they took place half a century ago. The surprising combination of photography and ceramics can have a humorous effect, in addition to the implicit commentary on the situations depicted.
The Sculptor is about, among other things, the role of women in art history. Can you explain the connection between this type of image and art history? And how did you come up with this theme?
MW: I already had some porn books and I printed them out in large formats. I often cut the woman out of the scene first because I am disturbed by how women are depicted. Even in an ad for glasses, someone is wearing a high thong. The next question was: what will replace her? At that time, I was reading an essay by Jeannette Winterson from her collection 12 Bytes about plastic sex robots that are popular in Asia. Winterson poses questions such as: what does this say about loneliness and where is the image of women heading? I then saw a film by a German artist at the Venice Biennale that was set in a brothel where only robots worked.
The robots were clearly popular because the place was packed. It all came together when I was leafing through several volumes of Kunstbeeld from the 1980s and early 1990s at my home in France. They all feature only men. The artist, the creative genius, was by definition a man. This view can even be found in the creation story in Genesis in which God creates Eve from Adam's rib. So, if men are attracted to a doll, they don't really care and little has changed. I'm generalising now, of course, but that's why you see a man ejaculating in a piece of clay, while, thanks to his sexual urges, he is also creating something in the meantime.
Your new series of sculptures can be seen next to The Sculptor. How does the new series Mama compare to the images from your previous series Miss Cox (Arising from the Ground), which was about obesity and its beauty?
MW: It originates from it, yes. I thought the female body was very beautiful to make. Of the previous series of four sculptures, three were figurative, without a head, but in one sculpture, no clear human figure was visible. I continued along that same line. The Chosen One is non-figurative. I wanted to find out how to make something amorphous, something formless that also has something physical. I spent every waking moment on it. I feel like there are all bodies in there.
Ruth, your new series is called Objects from the Household. You mentioned before that both of you touch on the mother theme. Can you explain the connection?
RvB: The first images for my new book came from my mother's recipe folders. She left me three binders with carefully copied recipes and pasted pictures. I didn't make any of these recipes. I keep them for other reasons. The care she put into it moves me: the index, the handwriting, the discoloured pages. What does a mother leave behind? How do you add value to the daily activities of a household? My mother died when I was 15. I never knew her as an adult. This has ensured that she has always remained a mother figure. The things I learned from her were old-fashioned mother-daughter things; cooking, knitting, gardening. She went to domestic school and was a patient craftswoman. This is probably where my fascination with manuals and books about needlework and household comes from. I have learned a lot from her, but not everything, and in that incompleteness lies a valuable resource for me – like a warm memory that you can look back on, but which is at the same time closed off and distorted by the time that has elapsed. That open end, the incompleteness, is in all my work.
I supplemented the images from my mother's cooking notebooks with images from various sections of my archive. As the collection grew, a rhythm and visual rhyme of ovals gradually emerged. Placing series of similar images one after the other in sequences also emphasises repetition and routine. On practicing, on collecting, on organising: recurring tasks and routines.
Tilting the images on the pages is a practical action, since the images fit better on the page tilted. This action causes a continuous transformation in the book. The depicted objects become equals. Scale fades and shapes converge. A crown is a cake, a hole is a clock.
So, the work is not directly about my mother, but it has its origins here. How does my own motherhood affect my work? Where does household and studio overlap? In my work, I explore the interaction between the organised nature of the household and the chaos and imagination I allow in the studio. And where they come together. The ovals symbolise this overlapping, a shape that can have many meanings at the same time. Repetition, physicality, imagination: you find them in almost all works in this series.
The publication Fruits of Labor was published for this exhibition. This is quite unusual, partly because it is often only clear which works will be shown right before the opening. How did the book come about?
RvB: In November, it became clear that we would be doing this show together, so we then approached Willem (Van Zoetendaal, ed.) about doing the design. It has become a different book than our 'own' books with their own narrative. This is more like a catalogue, with the names of the works and the dimensions and so on.
MW: I thought Willem's design was fantastic. He sent us the draft and we didn’t change a thing. I had been wanting to work with him for some time, but had never gotten around to it.
What makes him such a great designer?
RvB: I had worked with Willem on my previous book Eldorado (2020). It was a great experience because he can create a kind of foundation under my intuitive work, which goes in all directions. He works often with archives and can make a highly structured book about this, while still leaving a lot of room for a poetic view. This is something that really appeals to me because I also like archives and structuring them, but above all, I want to show the absurdity of strange combinations and where the stories I see in them originate.