A series of exhibitions and works reflecting on the search for family history, blurring the lines between the self and the other, the now and the past. - 2021
A while back, I recieved some letters my grandfather wrote towards the end of his life. In them, he was retelling his time as a forced labourer in Germany between 1943 and 1945. I was, and still am, fascinated by how these experiences lingered in him after so many years. As I go through his words, I wonder how much of them still live outside these pages. Are the people he met, the hospitals he worked in, the streets he walked on, still there? Do they remember him as much as he remembers them? Or perhaps these questions are more about myself, about how much his past is in my present. As I read these words, I feel confronted with parts of me that are not solely mine. Have I inherited something else
besides a name?
Tentatively and curiously, with this project, I am suggesting that, in some ways, my grandfather and I share parts of each other. We both are part of these letters, of this trip, of the collages you are looking at. The boundaries between generations are porous. I see myself in the places, people and emotions he turned into words which I still (re)visit.
text by Jose Hopkins Brocq
Images from ‘Remnants of a Moment’ at Kunstliefde, Utrecht 2021 and ‘Reoccurring Dreamhouse’ at Upscale Gallery, Rotterdam 2021