Researcher
In 2016 I graduated cum laude from the Master of Arts Education at the Hanzehogeschool Groningen. The thesis was called Art History & Art Making, a Research with A/r/tography.
Driven by my own fascination for making and for art history — as an artist and as a teacher — I explored how art history can be used as a tool to make art. I worked as an apprentice, with Rembrandt as my master printmaker, by studying his prints and the literature. But what are the necessary ingredients to be able to teach this, so that my students can experience what for me as an artist is so logical and yet so intuitive? That was the starting point from which the research expanded as a rhizome.
I used a/r/tography. It is not a mere method but a form of living inquiry, interwoven, in content and form, in the thesis. It names the three domains — artist, teacher, researcher — as sources of knowledge, and it urges you to embrace the chaos of this unorthodox way of researching, and to stay close to yourself through writing and through making.
By making myself an apprentice I understood better how hard it is to learn. I noticed that the freedom to form your own learning question is crucial. A master from art history functioned not only as inspiration and context. It proved a powerful tool for teaching technique, and for teaching students a critical way of thinking like an artist.
The research resulted in a series of six prints, work of students, and the thesis. It does not so much seek straight answers. It finds its significance in the confrontation of personal experience with theory, literature, and the world outside: students, the work field, critical friends. A moment in time, and a stepping stone for further research and dialogue.
I published an essay, A/r/tography: levend onderzoek, in Cultuur+Educatie 50 (LKCA, Utrecht, 2019). I am part of ARC, Artistic Research in the North, with Anke Coumans. I have given masterclasses in a/r/tography at Minerva, at ArtEZ Tilburg, and at the LKCA research network.
Later work includes Hereness, in Hornhuizen: a participatory photographic inquiry with villagers and farmers into what this place is, against the language that sells it from outside. Yi-Fu Tuan and Christian Norberg-Schulz as travel companions. Photography as a way to begin with images, before words.