30 august 2024, Flor Linckens
Memories in paint: the interwoven past of Caja Boogers
From 7 September, Galerie Gerhard Hofland in Amsterdam will host a solo exhibition by Caja Boogers. The exhibition features around ninety paintings in which Boogers explores the complex relationship between personal and collective memories, investigating how these memories contribute to the formation of identity. Simultaneously, the artist delves into the ways people view, interpret and absorb paintings.
The exhibition 'As far as I know' is the culmination of Boogers' personal exploration of his own background. Born in 2001 in Vlaardingen with a bicultural identity — his father being Dutch and his mother Indonesian-Dutch — Boogers uses his practice to reflect on how his family history impacts his identity. This project stemmed from conversations he had with his grandparents, particularly the stories they shared, albeit somewhat hesitant, about their lives in the former Dutch colony of the Dutch East Indies. These deeply rooted but often long-silenced stories, a phenomenon known as 'Indisch zwijgen' (Indonesian silence), form an important layer in Boogers' work. He breaks this silence, partly caused by their voices having gone unheard for so long, and translates the memories into images. In doing so, he gives voice to both his personal family history and the broader cultural history. The urgency to visually and substantively understand and capture these memories is a driving force behind the exhibition.
Boogers' technique ranges from photorealistic to abstract paintings. He plays with repetition and perspective, adding layers and imperfections that enhance the texture and depth of the images.
On the crowdfunding platform Voordekunst, the artist stated: “The series ‘As far as I know’ focuses on memories and how we store them. Fragments repeat, and images fade, sometimes almost to abstraction. There are things we know and things we don't know. In the space between, we capture each moment’s interpretations and assumptions, which are stored as memories. They are preserved in a space where the captured image is still affected by time and space, like an outdated, yellowed photo in an album. The vibrancy and light of different experiences cannot be accurately preserved in our brains. What we know is supplemented by our imagination, making every glance at our history both private and unique, while simultaneously showing a strong collective resemblance. Humanity is not one or two images. We consist of dozens, hundreds of images, incoherent and incomprehensible at first glance, until we learn to look more closely, until we can turn page after page and gain better insight into the path we have traveled, with each image telling something about our past, our history — as far as we can know, at least. The gaps are filled by our imagination. That exemplifies the surrender of the artist, the wealth of the viewer, the power of the observer; that is, if you think about it carefully, what makes us human.”
Caja Boogers graduated from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) in 2023. That same year, he received the Lakeside Collection Award from the Ron Mandos Young Blood Foundation and the Lakeside Collection, which included a residency at Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen. His work has been exhibited at Museum Helmond, Collectie de Groen and Museum Kranenburgh, and is part of the collections of Museum Voorlinden, the Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, the Lakeside Collection, the Ministry of the Interior, ING and Collectie de Groen.
