11 november 2025, Wouter van den Eijkel
Oleum Shell isla de Curaçao: TINKEBELL. at TORCH Gallery
After doing projects on Tata Steel in IJmuiden and cleaning product manufacturer Solvay in Tuscany, TINKEBELL. has now set her sights on the Asphalt Lake left behind by Shell on Curaçao. The refinery has been closed for six years, but the waste remains and the damage to both health and the environment is significant. This time, however, she says it is ‘not her story to tell’.
Oleum Shell isla de Curaçao can be seen at TORCH in Amsterdam until 20 December.
Chronically interested
For someone who describes herself as ‘chronically interested’, TINKEBELL. has found a fitting approach, one that allows her to engage her curiosity while channelling her creativity. Over the past five years, her focus has been on the environmental and health damage caused by heavy industry, as well as on the social and economic entanglement between local communities and employers like Tata Steel in IJmuiden and Solvay in Tuscany, Italy. Oleum Shell isla de Curaçao is the third project in what she calls her ‘series of series’, of which she plans to make five or six. Each of these projects culminates in an exhibition in which all work is created using waste materials collected on site. The projects are also sources of research and fieldwork — you might even call them adventures. That part of her work also features in Oleum Shell isla de Curaçao. The first edition of the Torch Times newspaper was published for the exhibition, full of background information and interviews about the project.
TINKEBELL., Oleum Shell isla de Curaçao #5, 2025, Torch Gallery
Illegal entry
After the series about Solvay, TINKEBELL. had planned to make a project about the oil spills and dumping by Shell in the Niger Delta. She eventually decided against it after local contacts warned that she would not likely survive the trip. Through an acquaintance, she was directed towards the Asphalt Lake on Curaçao — once a mangrove forest, now a place where you can’t stay long without feeling ill from the toxic chemicals coating its surface. Like Tata Steel and Solvay, the Asphalt Lake is a place you can easily find online — shockingly enough, under its own name. Unlike the pristine, Instagram-friendly beaches of Tuscany, this site is not one that visitors can easily access. To reach it, you have to cross a barrier. Even though this dumpsite lies right next to a residential area, it is not much of a talking point locally. “Many nearby residents have heard of it, but had no idea what it actually looks like.”
TINKEBELL., Oleum Shell isla de Curaçao, 2025, Torch Gallery
Light brown stripes and dots
Over the past 18 months, TINKEBELL. has visited the Asphalt Lake regularly. In one life-sized photograph displayed in the gallery’s front room, we see her sitting in the sludge painting. She also laid white sheets of paper soaked in thinner on the oily surface. The results — sheets patterned with light brown dots and streaks — hang beside it. Some relics are also on display: pieces of wood taken from the site, completely soaked with a tar-like material, each placed on a pedestal to draw attention to their strange beauty.
The walls in the back room are painted dark brown, fading gradually towards the bottom, resembling water droplets trickling down a windowpane. This visual metaphor illustrates what happened on Curaçao: for years, the tar-like waste from the refinery was dumped into the former mangrove bay, slowly seeping into the surrounding environment.
TINKEBELL., Oleum Shell isla de Curaçao, 2025, Torch Gallery
“You never quite know what you’ll get,” says Jorre Both of TORCH. “With TINKEBELL., the content dictates the form.” For Oleum Shell isla de Curaçao, she chose a more traditional medium and for the first time since art school, picked up a paintbrush.
The paintings depict fragments of mangrove forest — or rather, vegetation based on a bay similar to what the original mangrove at Asphalt Lake once was. No archival photos of the original area exist; the area has been used as a dumping ground for so long that its natural form is long forgotten.
Unlike her Solvay project, making paint from oil-refining waste was relatively easy this time. TINKEBELL. diluted the material with thinner. The biggest challenge was to transport the raw materials into the Netherlands: importing waste is prohibited, but importing art materials is allowed. As a result, 40 kilos of the stuff sat at the Port of Rotterdam for months awaiting customs clearance.
Someone else’s story
he main reason that the Asphalt Lake doesn’t spark much public debate on Curaçao is the refinery’s huge economic importance, as it has long provided jobs for the island’s residents. Although the environmental and health damage has been known since the 1960s, it remains uncertain whether Shell can ever be held accountable. Under pressure from Shell, contracts were drawn up that exempted the company from all responsibility for environmental and health-related consequences. In fact, the refinery’s potential reopening was a campaign issue during last year’s elections. How is that possible when the health impacts are so tangible? “If you stay there for more than an hour, you get dizzy, a headache and experience brain fog. If you live in the neighbourhood next to it, you experience that permanently. The air affects the brain.” Over time, TINKEBELL. realised that the roots of this indifference run much deeper than the refinery’s opening in 1915 — and that it was not her story to tell.
TINKEBELL., Oleum Shell isla de Curaçao #16, 2025, Torch Gallery
Naive and blameworthy
In retrospect, she calls it ‘naive and blameworthy’ that she initially gave little thought to the enduring impact of slavery — a legacy still visible in the island’s social and economic inequalities. This history continues to shape both opportunity and attitude among Curaçao’s inhabitants. Around 1650, the island was a centre of the slave trade under Dutch control. After the abolition of slavery in 1863, most formerly enslaved people remained on the island. Apart from a few jobs in the harbour, there was almost no work, forcing them to continue labouring for their former masters — now in exchange for tiny plots of land. In reality, little changed.
That shifted when Shell opened its refinery in 1915. People were willing to work long hours for very little pay and accepted the resulting health problems. By the mid-1980s, as the scale of Shell’s environmental damage became undeniable, the company sold the refinery to Curaçao for four guilders, with a contract that released Shell from all liability. The Curaçao government then leased the complex to Venezuela’s Petróleos de Venezuela, which continued dumping waste until the permits expired in 2019.
“For the most part, this project mirrors Tata and Solvay,” says the artist. “In all these places, industries have fostered social and economic dependency — while making both people and environments sick. The slavery legacy adds another layer to Curaçao’s situation, a heavier one. I’m a white Dutch woman, from Zeeland no less, and that makes it feel inappropriate for me to define this part of the story too explicitly. I do have an opinion, however, and I’m deeply shocked by what I’ve seen. But the final word belongs to the people there. Otherwise, I’d just be continuing the Dutch habit of thinking we always know best.”
TINKEBELL., Oleum Shell isla de Curaçao, 2025, Torch Gallery
