DISTANT SUFFERING LIV
i.d. of a vanishing object
Leiden 1959 | West Bank 2025
for my dear friends in dire straits in Gaza the journalist Rita Baroud the artist Maisara Baroud who were forced to 'move' fourteen times without taking anything but themselves with them
Work from our family archive
10 black and white photoprints
9 x 14 cm | 300 grs Plano
folding mattress
BASIC F15 | JYSK
plexiglas cube 30 x 30 x 30 cm
wooden console | 30 x 30 x 20 cm
painted matte white
Soap
Nablus soap, imported by Zepig from the Nablus Soap Company
Photo
Leiden, 1959 | Wil Freeke
Pieter de la Courtstraat 67 grandparents back garden
Left to right:
our niece Annemieke Freeke, me and my brother Marten
In the modern, civilized West, we spend a lot of time and attention on our identity. In which I should immediately restore that singular to plural: Facebooks' algorithm now distinguishes more than 50 different identities of its users. More important: some 20 types of identity are recognized in international law and protected by human rights.
One experiences identity, among others, as the result of origins, gender, sexual orientation, as well as experiences, achievements and social ties. An identity may be innate (such as by skin color), or created later in life (as in survivors of serious illness or trauma), or chosen (such as a political viewpoint). But in many cases, the line between what is selfchosen and what is given is quite fluid.
Ones own identity is always intertwined with the cultural, economic and social position. Again, a position that can also be fluid. Where culture is not just a collection of to be experienced elements such as art, music or cuisine, but is completed by a complex system of norms, values, beliefs and practices that surround us from birth.
When your living environment, your society with all its identitarian signs – architecture, libraries, universities, religious buildings, governmental buildings, historical heritage, etc. is destroyed and/or rendered unusable, the physical frame of reference of your past, your present and thus your future simultaneously disappears. The past, not only as memory or idea, but as material. The vibrant
We are dependent on peoples’ testimonies about life in the occupied territories, as it was, as it is and as it may never be again. We need witnesses who paint a picture of daily life in streets, squares and markets. Who tell what the landscape looked like, what trees were there, where the city was and where the countryside was. Who give an insight into people's moods, their dreams and questions, their plans and disappointments. Which tell of meals, grandmothers’ coffee, feasts, music, song and dance, and which explain how f.i. the Palestinians relate to religion, family, politics and culture. We need stories through which we can understand life in Palestine from the inside and empathize with the large and small events, the dilemmas, conflicts and contradictions and the struggle of every human being to live in impossible circumstances that many describe as genocidal.
The vibrant Palestinian culture with its long history is in immediate danger of being erased. Moreover, many artists have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank: writers, musicians, poets, calligraphers, singers and dancers photographers, painters, theater makers, etc. Or they are no longer able to work due to hardship and lack of resources.
What does it mean to erase a people – a nation, a culture, an identity? This is beginning to become blatantly clear in Gaza and eventually leads to the hor-rifying observation of Rita Baroud, a journalist friend in Gaza: “My apartment in al-Jalaa, in a five-
horrifying observation of Rita Baroud, a journalist friend in Gaza*: My apartment in al-Jalaa, in a fivestory building, was a witness of the small, simple details of our daily life. I lived there with my uncle and grandmother under a roof that gave us security and warmth. On the third day of the war, this safe haven, without any warning, turned into a mess. From one one moment to the next, everything was gone, everything buried – the walls that embraced our dreams, the corners that held our laughter, even the smell of the coffee my grandmother made in the morning.
I write. I write about widows lining up for food at a food distribution point, the last resort for families fighting against hunger. I write about children playing among the rubble, still trying to have a little fun in this tragedy . . .
I am 72 years old at the time I made this piece of art. In 1959 my uncle Wil Freeke took the picture I use in this piece. It shows his daughter - my niece – Annemieke, my brother Marten and me in the backyard of my paternal grandfather at the Pieter de la Courstraat 67 in Leiden.
A verifiable part of my indendity. Because we still have the photo, because my grandfather's house is beautifully updated into this era, because the small neighbouring square and park with the modest pond adorned with the merry figurine of a dolphin and a mermaid still exsists.
It’s a place I visit always whenever I am in my town of birth – Leiden. Materialised past, present and humble future. The gift of the object.
The last time I was in Nablus in the West Bank was in 1987 during the First Intifada. In Ramallah I spoke with a woman associated with the P.F.L.P., the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine. She taught me that When the women hit the street, that's when the street really becomes active. After the interview, she took me to one of the ancient soapmaking factories in Nablus. The scene was what Ramsey Nasr described**: In a large hall, thousands of white cubes lay piled up in circles. Layer upon layer they formed meters-high white columns of soap, like chimney pipes or some art installation.
Sources show how old this industry is: in the 13th century, soap production was already largely industrialized in the Islamic world, with factories in Nablus, Fes, Damascus and Aleppo.
In the year I visited the factory with Rada, there were a fifteen or so remaining of the more than thirty there were in 1907. As of 2008, there are only two soap factories operating in Nablus.*** Israeli military raids during the Second Intifada destroyed several soap factories in the historic quarter of Nablus. These two remainng factories currently produce for Palestine and some Arab countries, with by the Israli occuping forces very limited fairtrade exports to Europe and beyond.
Considered being quite an important aspect of Nablus's cultural heritage, the preservation of the Nabulsi soap-making industry has been the focus of several local projects. The restoration and conversion of the old Arafat soap factory into a Cultural Heritage Enrichment Center is one of them. In December 2024, Nabulsi soap was recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding.
In mid-February 2025, the apartheid state of Israel shifted its war crimes from Gaza to the West Bank. In two weeks time, more than 20,000 people already made into refugees were forcibly removed from their refugee camps. Again. Dozens of civilians were killed, hundreds wounded, hundreds were taken hostage as so called prisoners. The world did not even watch, for these pogroms remain eminently off-screen, notwithstanding the media age we live in.
If anything at all appears in the media, it is is focused on the crimes against Palestinian civilians by the Israeli occupation army and the barbaric hordes of ultra-right-wing settlers. In which attention to the object understandable loses out.
The centuries-old tradition of Nablus soap making, founded on taking care of the also often centuriesold olive trees, materialized in such a simple cube of soap, I would like to commemorate. Because it incorporates the political, cutural, historical and economic heritage of Palestinian culture..
Because that little cube literally comes from the soil of Palestine thanks to the generosity of the olive tree and its roots. Because there is intrinsic value and beauty in the juxtaposition use / disappearance of the object. Because that little object is also the analogy and metaphor of cleaning. Which Ramsy Nasser described profoundly in the essay mentioned: I stood there, and the floor in front of me was soap, tiled with bright white cubes. The Palestinian who showed me around, stood across the soap floor. “Come,” he said. I didn't dare, thought it churlish to just walk across. “Don't worry, Ramsey,” echoed down the hall, “It is soap - it will clean itself.” Ethnic cleansing is the opposite of soap. It is violence - it will fight itself.
Middelburg, February 20, 2025
* Rita Baroud | Ontheemd in Gaza: ik ben 22 jaar en voel me eeuwen ouder
Displaced in Gaza: I am 22 years old and feel centuries older
NRC | December 20, 2024
** Wat is verzet? Het antwoord van Ramsy Nasr What is resistance? Ramsy Nasr's answer
Volkskrant | February 15, 2025
*** This Nablus soap: made by theMojtaba Adnan Tbeleh family, founded in 1971. The 400-yearold family tradition goes so far that the man who cubes the soap is called Tubeili.
DISTANT SUFFERING | the project
Martha Jager, curator Vleeshal in MiddelburgNL about the oeuvre (2023) after a studio visit: 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, in that the work never becomes bitter or pedantic, while at the same time the dialogue with the viewer is actively maintained. It is a tender form of activism that moves and urges action and also continuously questions the role of art.
Since 2013, by means of the ongoing art-series distant suffering, the Dutch artist Hans Overvliet (Leiden, 1952) investigates the role of the media in their representtation 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. Of course these experiences resonate in distant suffering.
Elements of distant suffering were exhibited in the Netherlands, Belgium, Pakistan, England, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Albania, Germany, Lebanon, the U.S.A., Brasil, Greece, Argentina and Sweden. In 2023, his whole body of paper collages (1999 – 2012) joined Geert Verbeke’s renowned collection of collages and assemblages.
In winter 2024 - 2025 the whole oeuvre of was exhibited in the museum part of the Verbeke Foundation. All the work will then be included in the permanent collection.
Next to his art-work Hans is, together with his wife Willy van Houtum, the founder and every day guardian of ruimteCAESUUR, the 30-year old space for contemporary art in Middelburg in the province of Zeeland.
Thanks
Marten Overvliet, who found the photo by Wil Freeke and sent it to me;
Marcel | Zepig;
Café l'Espérance, Kaiserstraat 1, Leiden
Showing the picture of Wil Freeke;
Willy van Houtum and Giel Louws who helped guard and preserve the clarity of the work.
