Innocence. Isn’t that a much more interesting idea than beauty and comfort?
John Maxwell Coutzee
studio set-up | photo ©Dani Ploeger – March 22, 2023
Sand from Venice Beach, Los Angeles U.S.A. | collected in May by Ben
Sand from the Westkappelse Seadike, by the artist, Zealand 20/02/’23
Sand from Sana’a | Yemen collected in February 2023 by Galit.
Postiljons d’amour Amar, Issam&Bo
work
tea glass | Loctite Super Glue Glas sand from Sana’a [ Yemen ], thanks to Galit, Amar, Issam&Bo sand from West Kapelle [the Netherlands ] sand from Los Angeles [ U.S.A. ], thanks to Ben engraved brass plate / font style New Roman | 10 x 7 cm.
plexiglass hood | 30 x 30 x 30 [ x o,3 ] cm.
plinth | 30 x 30 cm. | console 30 x 30 x 85 cm.
primer white / topcoat Gamma white 710 – matt
text engraved in memory of Raja Hamid Yahya al-Oud [14]
† 23 March 2018 | Sa'dah – Yemen
Raja was hit by a CBU-52 B/B cluster bomb, manufactured in 1977 in the Milan Army Ammunition Plant, Jackson, West Tennessee, U.S.A.
exhibitions
June – August 2021
Luxfer Open Space | Česká SkaliceCzech Republic | curator Kate Štroblová
September 2023
Durden and Ray | Los AgelesU S A | curator Carlos Beltran Arechiga
DISTANT SUFFERING XX | i.d. of a shared cup of teaFinding out who exactly are the victims of the war in Yemen is a hell of a job. Most often you will find only categories: "families", "(young) children", "wedding guests" , "funeral attendants", "half the village", "bus passengers", etc., etc.
I have literally read hundreds of UN documents on victims. It was hard to find any names there. These reports also provide a picture of a huge, well-oiled, bureaucratic organization that is involved in registering war crimes in Yemen. Without any consequence.
One of the first names I came across was in a newspaper - the Guardian1: 14-year-old Raja Hamid Yahya al-Oud from Sana’a. She died by a fragmentation bomb dropped by an American-backed Saudi Arabian drone in the vicinity of Sa’dah. The devastating effects that dud bomblets from cluster munitions have inflicted on civilians is well documented. They have killed or injured an estimated 56,000 to 86,000 civilians since World War II. The United States alone has spent more than $ 3.4 billion on demining operations since 1993, including in countries where it released hundreds of millions of bomblets in past wars that continue to kill and maim civilians.2
where I wandered as a young child in the late 1950s. The brass plates on the artifacts from all over the planet, spelled strange, often ineffable engraved places and names.
Names . . .
The war in Yemen has become a museum piece, as can be found in the Leiden Museum of Antiquities where
From the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, from the Caspian Sea to the Gulf of Aden: all cultures there have at least one thing in common: the mandatory drinking of a glass of tea on every occasion as a sign of respect, hospitality and contact.
In Yemen I was allowed to sit down at many an opportunity to drink tea. A ritual that is always taunted by the far-right when people try to do something positive on intercultural communication: drinking tea is sugar coating Islam terrorism.
I took my love for Yemen as the starting point to set up a small monument for Raja Hamid Yahya al-Oud, an innocent child, born in Sana’a and killed just outside of Saada in the fifteenth year of her life . . .
1. Bethan McKernan | October 3, 2019 | A father's grief and the Made in USA bomb dropped in Yemen https://www.theguardian.com/
2. John Ismay | December 4, 2019
America’s Dark History of Killing Its Own Troops With Cluster Munitions Magazine New York Times
Photo: ©Omer Fast | 2011
Sill from: Five Thousand Feet is the Best
About distant suffering
Since 2013, by means of the art-series distant suffering, the Dutch artist Hans Overvliet (Leiden, 1952) investigates the role of the media in their representation of (military) violence. This, in the context of themes as perception, memory and identity formation.
Overvliet uses a various range of media, symbols and codes, bringing together dichotomies like beauty and violence, refinement and brutality, the sublime and the vulgar.
Aspects of power, politics, exclusion, censorship and the connection between artist, artwork and viewer infiltrate his multifaceted conceptual oeuvre.
As a reporter, Overvliet was an eyewitness to the events in the Middle East during the 1980s. These experiences resonate in the oeuvre of distant suffering.
Overvliet employs an apparently controversial strategy: that of poetic images, inspired by the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822): Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Elements of distant suffering were exhibited in the Netherlands, Belgium, Pakistan, England, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Lebanon, the U.S.A., France and Sweden.
Martha Jager, Curator Vleeshal about the oeuvre: The dedication to art as a relational verb is central to Overvliet's work. On the one hand, the balance between poetry and criticism is special: the work never becomes bitter or pedantic. At the same time the dialogue with the viewer is always actively maintained. (. . .) It is a tender form of activism that moves and urges action and also continuously questions the role of art.
Hans’ engaged paper collages are included in the collection of Geert and Carla Verbeke-Lens and have found their place in the Verbeke Foundation in KemzekeBelgium .
Hans Overvliet was born in Leiden in 1952; he lives in Middelburg and works in Vlissingen in the province of Zeeland in the South-West of the Netherlands.
Next to his art-work he is, together with his wife Willy van Houtum, the founder and every day guardian of the 29-year old space for contemporary art: ruimteCAESUUr.
Backside cover hands of Issam and Hans | sand from Yemen | photo Bo de Jong | March 24, 2023
John Maxwell Coutzee
