Amsterdam

Troubled Waters

March 6 - April 22, 2019

The full exhibition brochure for Amsterdam can be viewed here from curators Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker and Anikó Ouweneel-Tóth with help from Klaas Holwerda and Lieke Wijnia.

Hansa Versteeg, Madonna del Mare Nostrum, Mantel der Liefde (2017)

1. Location: Nicolaasbasiliek, Prins Hendrikkade 73.

Read a visual meditation about this station here.

This iconic, modern Madonna is standing in her full dignity; she has no fear. Her thermal emergency blanket alludes to the many other mothers along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. In that way she is contemporary. At the same time, she is the timeless mother who carries the promise of the future in her arms. She herself has become the question: Will you receive us in your heart?

Location: The route starts at Prins Hendrikkade 73, in the Church of Saint Nicholas. In 2012 this church was elevated to a ‘basilica minor’ and, together with ten other churches and two synagogues, it is part of ‘Dutch Museum Churches’, an initiative of the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht. Just like the final location of the route, the Oude Kerk (Old Church), the basilica is dedicated to Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children, sailors and the harbor city of Amsterdam.

G. Roland Biermann, Stations II (2019).

Location: De Hoftuin, Nieuwe Herengracht 18a

The artist says about this work: “Silver safety barriers cut through the air, oil drums are spread out on the ground like the cargo of a stranded ship, washed up on the beach: a gruesome scene in the serene surroundings of the historic Corvershof. The safety barriers form three asymmetric, X-shaped crosses. On the one hand, they evoke traffic signs that warn us of a dangerous intersection; on the other hand, they refer to the three crosses on Golgotha as well as the three St Andrew’s crosses in the coat of arms of Amsterdam. Saint Andrew was a simple fisherman who died as a martyr on an X-shaped cross.”

Location: De Hoftuin, Corvershof, Nieuwe Herengracht 18a (Diaconal Bureau Protestants Church Amsterdam). From the seventeenth century, these premises were used for the relief and care of the poor and elderly. Today they are the offices of social enterprises, welfare organisations, and the diaconal bureau of the Protestant Church in Amsterdam.

Yona Verwer and Katarzyna Kozera, Troubled Waters (2018). Sounds by Alon Nechushtan and Dan Schwartz, video by Francesca Giovanetti and Masha Norman.

Location: Reinwardt Academie, Hortusplantsoen 2.

This installation by Dutch American artist Yona Verwer and Polish American artist Katarzyna Kozera, both residing in New York, consists of two manipulated photographs and two maps of De Wallen (the red-light district) and Jodenbuurt (the old Jewish neighborhood). The panels are interactive; through iPads and smartphones one can watch short augmented-reality videos and listen to soundscapes. The soundscapes for the Holocaust panel, composed by Dan Schwartz, utilize ambient sounds recorded in 2017 at locations where the famous Februaristaking (February strike) of 1941 against the German occupation took place, while the sex industry panel is accompanied by the electro-acoustic composition Dark Forces by Alon Nechushtan.

Location: Reinwardt Academy, Hortusplantsoen 2. This arts university offers a bachelor’s degree in cultural heritage and an international master’s degree in museology. From 1926 to 1976 it was the location of the J.C. Amman School for deaf children. During World War II the Jewish students and teachers of this school were taken to concentration camps.

Lynn Aldrich, Ocean Eden (2016).

Location Keizersgrachtkerk, Keizersgracht 566.

This colorful installation by American artist Lynn Aldrich is made from all sorts of ordinary cleaning tools, such as plastic sponges and brushes. Like a marine biologist, the artist collected “specimens” on shopping sprees all over Los Angeles and then studied them in the studio. Slowly they were constructed into a ‘coral reef’ as a monument to the extravagant biodiversity of creation, a miniature version of the Garden of Eden. O deepest irony – is it not all this plastic which we consume together that pollutes the oceans? And is it not exactly this that asks for a major sweep?

Location: Keizersgrachtkerk, Keizersgracht 566. This church is visited by people of all ages from inside and outside Amsterdam and from different denominations. The services devote a lot of attention to current social matters. Various issue groups work to put this social orientation into practice.

Iris Kensmil, Out of History (2013).

Location: Amsterdam Galerij (Amsterdam Museum), Kalverstraat 92.

At this station we contemplate the suffering caused by the slave trade, in which traders from Amsterdam were also involved. Iris Kensmil, an artist with a Surinam background, has painted portraits of three eighteenth-century individuals from Surinam who managed to secure for themselves a position and a future in opposition to colonial oppression. (Their actual likenesses are unknown.) Just like Simon of Cyrene, who stopped to help Jesus by carrying his cross, these people resisted injustice. The triptych hangs amongst the group portraits in the Amsterdam Gallery as a call to action.

Location: The Amsterdam Gallery, Amsterdam Museum, Kalverstraat 92, situated in the former Citizens’ Orphanage, one of the oldest and most famous orphanages in the Netherlands. From 1580 to 1960, tens of thousands of children grew up in this orphanage. The gate in the Kalverstraat is decorated with a plaque that summons us to ‘help carry.’

Güler Ates, Water no longer dances with light, 2019.

Location: Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk, Keizersgracht 218-B.

Read a visual meditation about this station here.
In the Stations of the Cross, Veronica is the woman who helps Jesus persevere. She confronts us with the classic question: In whom do we invest, convinced that the person can make a difference in this world? Who can lean on us? Güler Ates grew up in the mystic tradition of East Turkey. She is based in London and works with video, photography, printmaking and performance. One of the core elements in her work is cultural displacement. She studies the interaction of Eastern and Western cultures.

Location: Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk (Church of Our Lady), Keizersgracht 218 B. This house of prayer is used by both Roman Catholic and Syriac Orthodox communities. The latter call it the Mother of God Church.

Paul van Dongen, Oordeel (2012) & Verrijzen (2013).
Location: The Small Museum at Paradiso, Weteringschans 6-8.

In these two drawings by Paul van Dongen, we see human beings in all their nakedness: vulnerable, without any concealing facade. Judgement shows people who are falling, perhaps because they had been given too heavy a burden to carry, just like Jesus, who was the ultimate victim of an ultimate injustice. The artist: “This drawing is part of a series which has the fall of man as its main theme. I did not want to portray the fall literally as in Genesis but rather, as a choreographer, to make a composition with naked male figures who together express the fall, an existence without solid ground, being lost beyond redemption. In an ornate whirling, the men turn, fall and tumble over one another.” However, people can get up again, as did Jesus after he fell this second time

Location: The Small Museum, Paradiso, Weteringschans 6-8. In 2016 the music venue and cultural center Paradiso, housed in a converted former church building from the nineteenth century, opened The Small Museum. The smallest museum in the Netherlands, it is located in one of the cabinets where the Vrije Gemeente (Free Congregation) used to display its announcements. The exhibitions regularly link to the religious past of the building.

Arent Weevers, Josephine’s Well (2011)
Location: Doopsgezinde Singelkerk, Singel 452.

Read a visual meditation about this station (and station 9) here.

The visitor to this station is made to observe human vulnerability and strength, in this case in female bodies. Is it possible to extend this observance into an exercise in compassion, a way of relating to the o/Other?

Location: Doopsgezinde Singelkerk (Singel Mennonite Church), Singel 452. Amsterdam has been a center of Mennonite activities since 1530. This church, dating from 1639, is a perfect example of a hidden church: a church that is not recognisable as such from the street. The 3D (stereoscopic) video installation Josephine’s Well has been placed in a marble hall next to the ‘cloister’ (two covered alleys). Recently the old well of this building was excavated right next to this space.

Janpeter Muilwijk, Der Tod und das Mädchen (2017)
Location: Doopsgezinde Singelkerk, Singel 452.

Read a visual meditation about this station (and station 8) here.

Jesus falls a third time under the weight of his cross. And yet he gets up again. Tortured, bleeding and exhausted, he still gets up. He wants to accomplish his task. The ultimate counterpoint to this third fall is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on the third day after the crucifixion. The artist says: “In this traumatic period of my life, painting turned out to be a source of comfort, raising the big questions in a different way after the suicide of Mattia. There were no unequivocal answers, no definitive conclusions, but images that drilled down to a deeper layer, beyond thoughts and words. This series of paintings offered me a look into my own soul. In spite of the big shock of this great loss, they incorporate a calm presence of loveliness and comfort. Death is only a passage. My deceased daughter brings me into an endless space beyond our perception of finite life: the immortality of our soul.”

Location: Doopsgezinde Singelkerk (Singel Mennonite Church), Singel 452. Amsterdam has been a center of Mennonite activities since 1530. This church, dating from 1639, is a perfect example of a hidden church: a church that is not recognisable as such from the street.

Masha Trebukova, Columbarium & Anywhere, Anytime (2018).
Location: Sant’Egidio, Mozes en Aäronkerk, Waterlooplein 207.

The torture and humiliations continue. Jesus is robbed of his clothes. Today we also read daily news headlines of people being degraded in so many ways. Masha Trebukova spent months painting pictures of the news on newspaper. The artist: “The columbarium (a wall with urns, used in the Roman Empire as a last resting place) is a warning. The pictures on the columbaria of that time pointed to the hereafter. I painted current pictures of the news as a wall of urns to indicate what violence can lead to. Where does it stop? Will it ever stop?”

Location: Mozes en Aäronkerk (Moses and Aaron Church), Waterlooplein 207, the home church of the Community of Sant’Egidio. The members of this community purpose to walk with people who are suffering. They make friends with the homeless and refugees, young and old, in the city. Through friendship, they want to offer hope for a new and better life.

Erica Grimm, in collaboration with Sheinagh Anderson and Tracie Stewart. Salt Water Skin Boats (2018); photo: Sharon Huget.
Location: De Waalse Kerk, Walenpleintje 159.

We are, metaphorically, skin boats, sustained by and inseparable from a dangerously changing global ocean. Salt Water Skin Boats proposes an analogy between our bodies and the vast ecology of the global ocean: between the life-sustaining, precariously balanced ocean chemistry and the chemistry of our own salt-water-filled bodies. The monk of history would cast himself into the ocean at the mercy of the elements to bring vision and light (Salvation) to wherever and whomever God (Divinity, Holy Spirit) so designed. The coracle had no rudder or anchor. Setting sail was an act of faith, of trust. The ambient soundscape, accessible by QR code and cell phone technology, functions as a living, breathing, sounding entity—the life of the ocean brought into the listener’s awareness. In the last two hundred years, human actions have changed the chemistry of the ocean. We are crucifying the earth.

Location: Waalse Kerk (Walloon Church), Walenpleintje 159. In 1578 the medieval church of the Brothers of Saint Paul was put at the disposal of French-speaking Protestant refugees from the Southern Netherlands and France and has thenceforth been called the Église Wallonne (Waalse Kerk or Walloon Church). The church is still being used for services and is also known as a charming concert platform with amazing acoustics and a great Müller organ.

Soundscape: Scan the displayed QR code near the work or listen via Soundcloud.

Anjet van Linge, Ontferming (2018)

Location: Oudezijds 100 (Allemanskapel Sint Joris), Oudezijds Achterburgwal 100-102.

Kyrie eleison – “Lord, have mercy” – is a prayer that has been a part of the Christian tradition for two thousand years. In the medieval church of Eenrum in the northern Netherlands, artist Anjet van Linge chiseled it into stone in the place where the altar had once been. She worked in silence and alone, in the exact spot where pastors and priests have asked for the Lord’s mercy for centuries.

Location: Allemanskapel van Sint Joris (Chapel of Saint George), Oudezijds Achterburgwal 100 and 102. Here lives the Spe Gaudentes community, formed by people from all walks of life. In the very center of Amsterdam they strive to live out the gospel of Jesus Christ by offering help through various social-care programs.

Jan Tregot, The last days (2016-2017).
In collaboration with Erik van de Beek. (photo: Anton Houtappels)
Location: Museum Ons’Lieve Heer op Solder, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 38.

One of the most violent depositions ever made, Jan Tregot’s The Last Days reuses an old corpus of Christ in a manner that references contemporary acts of terror. It is displayed in the Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder alongside a Pietà from the museum’s own collection.

Location: Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (Museum Our Lord in the Attic), Oudezijds Voorburgwal 38. Hidden in an exceptionally well-preserved canal house, this museum is the oldest one in the city after the Rijksmuseum. Above the historically furnished living quarters, the visitor arrives at what is literally the highlight of the museum: a complete church in the attic. In 2015 the monument was extended with a new building that makes a connection with the present time. The sculpture The Last Days is placed in the modern exhibition space.

Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Anastasis (2018) (Photo: Maarten Nauw).
Location: Oude Kerk, Oudekerksplein 23.

Read a visual meditation about this station here.

The Holy Sepulchre Chapel was built in 1515 after the example of the Holy Sepulchre Church in Jerusalem. A canopy is visible in the space, under which you would expect to see something. In the sixteenth century a group of sculptures stood there that depicted the deposition and the mourning of Christ. This sculpture group was destroyed during the iconoclastic fury in 1566. Now there is emptiness and the canopy conveys the absence of the image. In the work Αναστάσης the artist relates to the visibility of the absent sculptures.

Stations of the Cross in Amsterdam, NL was made possible by the financial and moral support of the following:

ArtWay, Visio Divina, Protestantse Kerk Amsterdam, Kerk En Wereld, Van Der Leeuw Stichting.