The Speaking Land
'The Land still speaks to us and The Speaking Land will helps us understand its language'. *01
I am a visual artist based in Kampen/Overijssel, The Netherlands. I work in a variety of media, from walks to video to performances; I use my body awareness/senses to experience the natural and urban places in my surroundings. My art-works have often a social critical layer that is performed in a poetic way. Through my work I want to contribute to a reexamination of the relationship between the human- and the non-human world. I studied Fine Arts at Minerva Academy Groningen, The PhotoAcademy Amsterdam & The Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.
Before my study at the art-academy I made a painting with the title: 'The Speaking Land'. This work suggested the soil of the Uluru (rock) Area in Central-Australia and was made of thick paint in the colors red and brown. Although I have never been to Australia; I felt a very strong connection to the Uluru Area and the Indigenous Knowledge. The traditional owners are the Anangu people; one of the oldest human societies in the world. The Title'The Speaking Land' refers for me to the language of a specific natural or urban place through stories, memories, growing plants, wind-whispers, the soil, founded materials, stones and sounds.
At the back-cover of the book 'The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia' by Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt is written:'The Land still speaks to us and The Speaking Land will helps us understand its language'. This phrase is the underlaying content of my art-works. *01
I capture the language and the relation with the places through installations, walks, drawings, performances, videos, thoughts, poems, field-recordings, texts, maps and photo's.
As a part of my work I quote phrases of poets, philosophers, indigenous people and writers in the fields of spiritual ecology, philosophy, geography, architecture, anthropology, science and the knowledge of traditional wisdom.
~Annemarie Cilon~