Surrender

Photo on aluminum, steel, earth, 97cm x 85cm x 65cm

Site-specific work in the garden of Museum Tot Zover at De Nieuwe Ooster cemetery in Amsterdam.

In the photo installation Surrender, the focus is on one of the most emotionally charged places in a woman’s body; the pelvic area. It is the place where life begins, grows, sometimes ends, or where a desire goes unanswered. It is the place of great joy and deep sorrow and pain. In some women, the pelvic area is a wound, in others a temple.

The work Surrender is a raw and direct image, where feelings of fear and emptiness are opposed to growth and joy, in the reassuring and relativizing realization that we are part of the endless cycle of life and death. This self-portrait has a direct connection to the earth and also to the cemetery grounds. The inner, the core of the body is gone, it is a hole in the photo and the viewer looks 65 centimeters into the depth, to the earth. In the Netherlands the minimum depth of a grave is 65 cm.