Orange Fever, 50 x 40 cm (without frame), collage
Ode aan Dennis de Wit en z’n gabber Herman (2021)
The past year I became friends with my neighbour Dennis.
Dennis lost his job since Corona as a cook at FEBO and is enjoying most of his time at his selfmade terrace in front of his house.
I was enjoying my corona boredom too and we started hanging out.
I’m not used to people ringing my doorbell randomly (Probably due to Dutch social standards), but Dennis showed me that it’s quite nice sometimes to not plan anything.
Dennis is probably one of the biggest Ajax fans in Amsterdam, his whole house is filled with Ajax merchandise.
I’ve had a bit of a preconception about ‘hooligans’, although one of my dutch family members is a famous soccer referee.
Dennis showed me to not ‘judge a book by it’s cover’, or just to not judge someone by the way they look anyway.
He turned out to be one of the sweetest, most loyal and openminded people i’ve ever met.
That’s why I was inspired to make a work dedicated to Dennis and his cat Herman.
It was also interesting to focus with my art more on my dutch heritage.
In my work i’m mostly focussed on the Japanese part of my roots, while I actually grew up in the Netherlands.
Which I realised is kinda weird because my work is about the interpretation of culture, and not only about Japanese culture.
People mostly see me as a Japanese artist and I like to play with that blurred vision in how people interpret my work.
I also don’t really connect with most of my dutch family, always felt a bit of an outcast.
Although I have that even more with my Japanese family.
What I find interesting about the ’soccer/hooligan/ajaxied’ ‘culture’ is the nationalism, which is very strong among most of them.
I don’t see that very often in dutch people, or maybe that’s because I grew up in Amsterdam., 50cm x 40cm, collage, 2021