VALERIE VAN LEERSUM
artist based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
artist based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
At the invitation of the Frisian literary archive Tresoar and the Oerol festival two years ago, I went in search of the horizon. The place that connects us to the distance and at the same time brings us back to ourselves is strongly connected to the Frisian landscape. Besides actively staring at this apparent line for hours, I also looked at the use of color in Frisian paintings of the horizon. The intuitive scanning of the landscape came across also in the diaries and note books where the painters describe what the wide landscape and the horizon meant to them. Also I corresponded with several people on the subject.
After two corona years, in which the work continued to develop, it manifested in an imaginative investigation into the horizon on the mudflats of the island Terschelling. This consisted of an installation of seven, six meter high coloured columns, each based on four pixels of the horizon of a Frisian painting. The interaction with the light, the tide, the weather, translated into a breathtaking spectacle. In addition to the visual component, the visitor could listen to an audio piece in which the philosophical aspect of the horizon ‘to search and to let go' was central. Finally, the visitor was invited to write a letter to the horizon. This resulted in a beautiful collection of intimate letters, which will ultimately be preserved in Tresoar's archive. For ten days, visitors, just like the painters, made a trip to the outside as well as the inside. The mudflats are now mudflats again, but if you look closely, the colors resonate like a mirage on the retina.
Exposed: Oerol festival 2023
Link to audio:
https://valerievanleersum.nl/daar-gezien-van-hier/
Link to birdview registration: https://we.tl/t-KMLsJ36DNO
