Without Luck No One Fares Well:
On Saturday afternoon, January 31, 1953, a strong storm started in large parts of the Netherlands. The KNMI sounds the alarm. But in a time without the internet, cell phones and few radios and TV, such a warning is of little use. Even a large proportion of the water authorities do not get the message. Not that that would have mattered much because the storm that was coming was unstoppable.
While the rain hits the windows, Zeeland and parts of North Brabant and South Holland go to sleep peacefully. As always, dike guards keep an eye on things. But from 2 o'clock at night things go wrong. In 2 hours time the dikes will break at hundreds of locations. The water flows into the towns and villages and fleeing is too late. Everyone is called upon to save what can be saved.
The balance is drawn up the next day. 1,836 people did not survive the flood disaster, as did 187,000 livestock and poultry. 72,000 people fled. They left home and hearth to start over somewhere else.
Fort Sabina in Willemstad is inhabited in 1953 by a fort guard and his family. They live far from civilization and are therefore overwhelmed by the water. The whole family drowns in the fortress except for the eldest daughter. She is temporarily staying with relatives in the north.
For the exhibition Landkunst (organised by Kunstloc Brabant) Tahné Kleijn was inspired by the fate of the family. She collected materials that could have been on the table in Brabant families in 1953. She placed this in a still life which, just like 75 years earlier, she submerged. In doing so, she placed fish that swam in the waters at that time.